Balian laughed shortly. “Your cousin wants a barony, John.”
“Is that so bad?” John asked back cautiously. After all, that’s what Aimery—and in his own heart John, too—wanted. Not one like this, though, cut off from the sea, dependent on unreliable rains, vulnerable to Saracen attack, and haunted by the ghosts of past tenants. . . .
“No, it’s perfectly natural,” his father answered his question reasonably. “It’s what men fight for—land, wealth, fame, and faith—probably in that order. Why does Guy de Lusignan” (John noticed his father did not dignify him with the title “king”) “resist carving the island up? It’s big and rich enough to support more than a score of baronies, much less reward the handful of men with him.”
John weighed his head from side to side. “I’m not sure, but once when Bethsan was pressing for ‘clear authority’ in one place or another, King Guy snarled that he wasn’t about to set up another High Court that could turn against him.”
“Ah,” Balian nodded knowingly. “So that’s the problem.” When John and Philip stared at him questioningly, he elaborated, “Guy’s never forgotten or forgiven the High Court for opposing him. He’s afraid of independent barons, men who have independent opinions, and—more dangerous—sufficient resources to stand on their own feet.”
That made sense to John and he nodded, but then he had another thought. “Did you know Humphrey de Toron was with King Guy?”
“I guess I had heard that, but I’d forgotten. You’ve seen him?” Balian asked with a sideways glance. He too could remember when Humphrey had been like an older brother to John.
“He agrees with Lord Aimery about using less force, but he won’t speak up. He says if he spoke up it would do more harm than good.”
Balian snorted and conceded, “He’s probably right.”
“Why do people look down on him so much?” John asked cautiously.
“I don’t know about ‘people,’” Balian’s tone turned tart, “but I will never forgive him for betraying us at Nablus, sneaking out in the dark of night to go pay homage to Sibylla, thereby undermining the authority of the High Court and denying Isabella her rightful crown. It was because of him that Guy was crowned king, that your uncle Baldwin fled the Kingdom, that the Count of Tripoli sought a separate peace with Saladin, and ultimately that we found ourselves on the Horns of Hattin.”
John knew all that, but it wasn’t what he was actually asking about. He tried again. “But that’s not everything, is it? I mean, Gauvain de Cheneché accused him of being a sodomite. . . .” John concentrated on guiding his horse as he said this, too embarrassed to risk a glance at his father.
Balian gave his son another sidelong glance and asked back, “You know what that means?”
“I think so. I can’t really picture it.”
“Oh, I’ll show you!” Philip offered, making John snarl at him to “shut up” and Balian laugh before warning sternly, “You’d better not, or I’ll have your hide in this life—before the Lord sends you to hell for all eternity in the next.”
“I just meant I can show John two sodomites painted on the mural of the Last Judgment in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Acre. Ernoul pointed it out to me at Easter.”
“I’ll have his hide for that!” Balian responded, but in a tone that made his sons laugh, and they dropped the topic. John, however, registered that his father had not denied the charge against Toron.
Later that day, a weather front swept in from the West. Stiff winds lashed rain mixed with snow across the valley, and howled around the walls and towers of the manor. By nightfall the peaks of the hills around them were dusted white with snow, but Balian was pleased to have the reservoirs and cisterns refilled. Meanwhile the household, forced inside by the weather, set to work decorating the hall and chapel for the Feast of the Nativity. In the kitchens, preparations were under way for a banquet, and the tenants had brought their solstice payments with the intention of staying through Christmas in order to enjoy Mass at the manor chapel and then partake in the traditional baronial Christmas festivities.
John found himself helping out in a variety of ways, from hanging holly on the walls to helping Father Angelus note and provide receipts for tithe payments. During the latter, John surprised (and amused) Father Angelus with his fluent but eclectic mix of imperial and colloquial (Cypriot!) Greek. They chatted away in this tongue as they worked. “You must show your mother how your Greek has improved!” Father Angelus urged. “She’ll be delighted!”
John was not reluctant to follow that advice, but he had a hard time finding an opportunity because his mother was so busy organizing the Christmas festivities. It was not until after compline, when his mother sank down into her favorite chair before the fire in the solar and announced she was exhausted but would like a cup of mulled wine before retiring, that John got his chance.
“Thelis krasi levko ee kokino?” John asked his mother, springing to his feet to serve her.
She smiled and answered, “Levko, parakalo.”
All that was quite simple, but now John surprised her with a flood of Greek—assuring her he would bring her mulled white wine, but only on the condition she stayed up to talk to him a little more. He had a thousand questions for her, he warned.
The smile she gave him would have melted the hearts of monks and mercenaries, much less her teenage son. “Janis,” she assured him in Greek, “to hear you speak my mother tongue like that, I would stay up all night. Send someone else for the wine!” Switching to French, she twisted around in her chair to call, “Ernoul? Ernoul? Where did he get to?” Although her husband had two squires, there was a division of labor between them. Ernoul, who had been too badly wounded at Hattin to carry arms ever again, no longer kept his lord’s armor, arms, or horses; those tasks fell to Georgios. Instead, he was expected to serve them at table and afterwards.
“Practicing his Christmas concert, of course,” her husband answered, coming up behind her. He laid his hands on her shoulders and his thumbs started rubbing the back of her neck, making her close her eyes with a sigh of contentment. “He is more troubadour than squire, and it’s time we acknowledged it. He’s a father, too. Far too old for squiring. I think I need a new squire, don’t you?” he spoke into her serenity.
“Who were you thinking of?” she asked without opening her eyes, while John ducked out to get her the mulled wine she wanted.
“Amalric, Beatrice’s middle boy.”
Maria Zoë’s eyes flew open, and she craned her neck to look up at her husband. “Passing over his older brother? Won’t Bart be jealous? Insulted?”
Balian sighed and moved around to seat himself in the chair waiting for him beside her. “Yes and no. He thinks he’s already his father’s successor and should be knighted.”
“He’s nowhere near ready!” Maria Zoë protested.
“And he never will be—as he well knows. He wants to avoid the unpleasantness of training and failing for all to see. The bigger problem is, I cannot afford to give him a fief. I need tenants who can work the land, not youths too taken with their alleged status and ‘birth rights’ to bend their backs to labor. I don’t think he’ll ever willingly accept that fact. He’s already threatened to haul me before the High Court for not giving him a fief.”
“The impudent little brat!” Maria Zoë declared indignantly, adding, “He should be grateful you waste time with him at all!” Yet at another level she understood Bart’s problem. Precisely because he had been a slave five long years, he was overly sensitive about his status. The Baron of Ibelin might clear irrigation ditches with his tenants, but never Bart d’Auber. She noted cautiously, “On the other hand, you do still owe six knights to the feudal army.”
“True, and Bart d’Auber will never be one of them,” Balian answered firmly, then checked over his shoulders to be sure Beatrice was not within hearing. He’d only broached the topic because he had not seen her here.
“Beatrice asked to go to bed early,” Maria Zoë answered his l
ook. “She seemed very tired. I hope she’s not ill.”
Balian nodded agreement. “I hope she’s not, too. Not now, just before Christmas, when you need all the help you can get. But as I was saying, I don’t believe Bart will ever make a knight. Amalric, on the other hand, has the right instincts for a fighting man. He’s aggressive and daring without being foolhardy. He’s had the nonsense knocked out of him the hard way, and he’s surprisingly cagey for a youth of just sixteen. Nor does he shy away from hard work. He’s always the first down at the lists, and often the last to leave as well. He knows he’s not yet good enough with a sword to survive real combat, which makes him try harder, not less. If I give him a chance, I believe he’ll grow into a very solid and trustworthy knight—like his grandfather.”
“But if you knight the younger brother and give him a fief, Bart will hate you.”
“I didn’t say I’d give Amalric a fief. I see him as a household knight. No more. Unless our fortunes change.” Changing the subject, he asked after Eschiva and Aimery.
“Off to bed early,” Maria Zoë answered with a knowing smile.
“I hope Eschiva wants another child,” Balian remarked with a slight frown, remembering how frightened his niece had always been of pregnancy.
“She does,” Maria Zoë assured him simply.
Balian chose not to pursue this discussion, because at this point John returned with a tray laden with goblets and a wine carafe. He presented both to his mother with a new flood of Greek.
Balian got to his feet. “If the two of you are going to chatter in that incomprehensible tongue, I’ll leave you to it.” Although he pretended irritation, he was very pleased to see that John had finally mastered a language he had long resisted, and he understood that his wife wanted time alone with her son. He kissed her hand in parting, and left John with his mother.
First John told his mother about his many adventures: how he’d found and adopted Barry, the attack in the tavern (he’d only promised not to tell his father about that), King Guy’s reception of them, the complaints of the Italian communes, and his adventures in disguise. His cheerful, almost bragging narrative elicited frequent laughter from his mother, sometimes as much for the idiomatic slang picked up on the streets of Nicosia as for the content. When he started talking of the encounter with Lakis, however, his tone turned thoughtful and worried. He ended by asking his mother plaintively, “How could I have helped him?”
He was seated on a cushion at his mother’s feet, with Barry’s head in his lap. Maria Zoë bent down and kissed the top of his head. “The important thing is that you wanted to help him, John.”
“From his point of view, I don’t think that’s good enough!” he answered testily.
“No, perhaps not,” his mother conceded. Her pride in a son who worried about how to help others rather than about his dignity (like Bart d’Auber) or his skills at horse and arms (like Amalric) was almost overwhelming. She knew better than to patronize him, however, and so answered practically. “Finding him an apprenticeship would help him most—a bookbinder would be perfect, if there is such a thing in Nicosia. I could ask in Acre if they know of an appropriate shop on Cyprus.”
The school of manuscript illustrators, previously attached to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, had re-established itself in Acre. They had been some of the primary beneficiaries of Ibelin’s surrender, as there was little doubt that, had Jerusalem fallen to Saladin by assault, the precious Christian texts decorated with images abhorred by Islam would have been destroyed. Because Ibelin’s surrender terms allowed the inhabitants of Jerusalem to ransom themselves and remove their portable property, the canons of the Holy Sepulcher had been able to rescue their most precious manuscripts and much of their vellum, parchment, paints, and brushes as well. Furthermore, the monks themselves had looked death in the face as the northern wall of Jerusalem collapsed, and they said daily prayers of thanks for their salvation—and for the Baron of Ibelin. Maria Zoë had no doubt that she could ask a favor of them. “I don’t suppose this orphan speaks any French or Latin?” she asked her son, thinking that a place with the scriptorium itself would offer the greatest chance of betterment.
“Lakis? No, he only speaks Greek. Mother?”
“Yes?”
“Just what are the differences between the Greek and the Latin Church?”
Maria Zoë drew a deep breath, and then shook her head. “It’s far too late, I’m too tired, and I’ve had too much wine. We’ll have to take up theology another day, if you don’t mind.”
“But you were raised in the Greek Church,” John insisted. “It can’t be that different from the Latin Church.”
“It’s not. The churches differ more on matters of form than content. We—I mean the Greek Orthodox Church—does not recognize the authority of the Pope to determine doctrine, for example, believing that only an ecumenical council of the heads of all the churches can do that. All Eastern Orthodox Churches, as far as I know, also believe that the Holy Spirit springs from the Father but not the Son.”
“Is that important?” John asked, frowning.
His mother laughed shortly. “I’m far too tired to know, John, and I can’t say it ever mattered to me, but you really ought to put these questions to Father Angelus and Father Michael. They have been your tutors since before you could read or write, and they have spent the better part of twenty years arguing—amicably, I might point out—about these very matters. If, however, you insist on asking a daughter of the Imperial family of the Eastern Roman Empire, then I will give you a political, rather than a theological, answer.”
John grinned. “That’s what I want, Mama!”
Maria Zoë laughed, recognizing her husband in her son. “The principal issue is who controls doctrine, and so what people think and believe. In the West, the Pope has established a position of unassailable dominance that allows him to excommunicate kings and call crusades, for example. My ancestors, on the other hand, resisted the idea of allowing any prelate to become that powerful. They preferred to let Church matters be determined by collective discussion—which inherently fostered competition and diversity of opinion and so opportunities to, shall we say, influence matters. At times, the divisions could be quite bitter and destructive, as during the iconoclastic strife, but on the whole the tactic allowed the Emperors to retain a powerful voice in Church matters.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t explain why millers and butchers on Cyprus should prefer to impale themselves on Templar lances than go to a Latin Mass,” John protested.
“True,” Maria Zoë conceded. “That has little to do with either theology or politics. One might even argue it has to do with the very absence of theological understanding. Illiterate people, who inherently understand little of the concepts behind the rituals they follow, often mistake form for content. And then there’s the issue of celibacy,” she added in a playful tone. “Greek Orthodox priests can marry. They are not prepared to sacrifice that privilege lightly, so they generally rile up their flocks to protect their pleasures.”
John’s scowl made her realize she had offended him. With a deep breath she forced herself to get serious again and continued, “Mostly, I think, it has to do with preferring to hear services in a language we understand.”
“So, why don’t we let people worship in whatever language they like?” John asked back earnestly.
“But we do! The Jacobites here hold their services in Arabic,” she pointed out. “And have you forgotten there were synagogues and mosques in Nablus? They were only banned from Jerusalem itself—and that more for military rather than theological reasons.”
John started slightly. He had forgotten. His mother’s lands of Nablus seemed as far away as ancient Rome to John. “Didn’t the King of Jerusalem object?” John asked, puzzled.
“Object to what?”
“Letting mosques and synagogues flourish?”
“Not at all. He simply taxed them more heavily,” Maria Zoë replied a bit flippantly, and again regretted
it. John was still very earnest. To make up for her tone, she leaned down, put her hands on both his shoulders and spoke very seriously. “There are good and bad men of every faith, John. The beauty of Christianity is it shows us the road to salvation through forgiveness and understanding. But if you really want to know my personal opinion”—Maria Zoë was a little drunk by now and about to confess something she would not have voiced to her more Catholic husband—“I don’t honestly think God cares what rite or formula we use for prayer. I think the only thing that matters to Him is what we pray for and the sincerity with which we do it.”
John twisted around and looked up at her. “Thank you.”
She kissed his forehead, and then pushed herself to her feet. “And that is the last you will get from me tonight, John. I am going to bed, no matter what you say.”
Chapter Seven
Rebels Against the Hospital
Island of Cyprus
April 1194
Kolossi
IT WAS THE STINK OF BURNED sugar that John would remember the rest of his life.
Word that rebels had attacked the hospital and sugar factory at Kolossi, run by the Knights Hospitaller, had reached Nicosia late on Sunday, but it had taken Lord Aimery two days to convince his brother Guy to let him go to investigate. Aimery and John had left the following morning and ridden hard to reach Limassol by nightfall. Here they had requested and received the hospitality of the Templars, staying overnight in the fortress-like commandery in the heart of the town. Aside from the obvious advantages of a clean bed, hearty food, and security, the Templars had also given refuge to the victims of the brutal attack, and Aimery had been able to interview the Turcopole commander as well as some of the Brother Sergeants from the hospital.
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