Antichrist

by Cecelia Holland

  “Corso, bring me a light supper in my room.”

  “Sire, is there something going on?”

  Frederick, headed for his room, turned and grinned. “Little boys don’t ask questions like that.” He went hack across the antechamber and into the unlit quiet of his bedroom.

  “Sire?”

  He lifted his head, surprised—it was full dark and he’d been sleeping. Theophano, in his arms, still had her arms around him, and when he moved, she sighed and shifted around, tangled in her long black hair. Corso was standing just inside the door.

  “What is it?”

  “Fulk and Balian of Sidon are here.”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  Corso came farther into the room and went around lighting the lamps. Frederick lay still, propped up on one elbow, waiting for the rest of him to wake up. With one forefinger he touched Theophano’s cheekbone. She opened her eyes and smiled and immediately went back to sleep again, and he grinned. Outside, in the antechamber, he heard a growing murmur of voices. Getting up, he pulled himself back into his clothes, drank half the watery wine on the tray beside the bed, and went out into the antechamber.

  Fulk was sitting beside the window; he jumped up. Beside him and Balian half a dozen other men were there, Tommaso and the Archbishop among them. Balian’s face was taut, and he kept tugging at his belt. He bowed and said, “Your Majesty, there’s trouble all over the city, and somebody said you’d taken measures—”

  “What kind of trouble?” Frederick was still buckling his belt. He went over to the window beside Fulk and looked out, but all he could see was the knights’ compound and the outer wall.

  “Mobs, rioting, looting, and they’re setting fires,” Fulk said. “Milling around and throwing rocks and breaking into houses.”

  “Where?”

  “Over by the Genoese Quarter, near Saint Anthony’s Gate, and up around the Templars’ Quarter.” Balian glanced around. “Have you taken measures?”

  “Some.” Frederick leaned out the window and looked up at the roof. It was flat, and if he could get up there— He turned back into the room.

  Abruptly in the city behind him a muffled boom thudded in the air and he jumped, startled. Fulk swore. “That was a granary, I hope.”

  “Where’s Ezzo?”

  “Down with Filangieri and his men.”

  “Come on.” He started for the door and Balian jumped to open it.

  Outside, the Saracens were talking together, and when he came out they stepped apart, watching him. “Ayub, come with me. All of you.” He walked through this room into the next, stopped, and looked around, uncertain where to go. Ayub brushed past him to a window and looked out. Somebody brought in a torch; the black smoke curled thickly, caught the faint breeze, and streamed away. Corso tugged at his sleeve and held out a cloak.

  “Not now. Later. Ayub?”

  Ayub turned and waved to him. When Frederick went to the window he could hear the sound of shouting far away. His skin prickled up.

  Ezzo and Conrad of Hohenlohe burst into the room, and Eno came straight over to him, his face red and one eye swollen nearly shut. “They’re starting fires now, see?”

  “I see it.” Beyond the wall of the compound light flickered and grew stronger. He couldn’t tell where it was, he was completely disoriented. His heart beat painfully fast. Stripping off his burnoose, Ayub crowded past him into the window, climbed up on the ledge, and leaned out, his hands over his head.

  Conrad said, “Sire, do you want the gates guarded?”

  “I told Hermann to do that this afternoon.”

  Ayub’s body slid quietly off the window ledge and vanished upward. The Assassin and Masuf leaned out the window to shout at him. Corso began to dance up and down.

  “Sire, wait for ladders, please.”

  “God, no.” He thrust his head and shoulders out the window. “Ayub. Can you see anything?”

  “Fires,” Ayub shouted in Arabic. “And there are a lot of people in the streets. Coining toward us.”

  “Aha.” Frederick ducked back into the room. “Rico, put a guard on this palace. Corso, when the ladders come, bring us some chairs and something to eat and drink.” Circus Maximus, he thought. In the ancient honorable tradition of Nero. When he looked out the window again, Ayub was leaning down to help him climb up. The roof was only a few feet above the top of the window, but if he fell he’d die. Beyond the walls he could hear high, wild voices shouting. He climbed up on the ledge.

  “Sire,” Conrad bawled. Frederick stood up on the ledge outside the window, holding on with one hand, and stretched the other arm up to Ayub. In the courtyard below him a man shouted in German. Ayub’s fingers closed over his wrist, and he let go with the other hand and scrabbled along the wall for a handhold. Ayub was drawing him up—he kicked his feet against the wall, pushing himself along, and fell across the eave onto the flat cold stone. Ayub bellowed to Yusuf and turned.

  “There. See?” He pointed.

  Frederick stood up, wiping his hands on his thighs. From here, he could see nearly the whole city. A building only three blocks away was burning, entirely wrapped in flames; the light played over the houses around it, and in the street beside it people ran, waving their arms, carrying torches. He sucked in his breath. The mob moving toward the compound was spilling along the Wall Street, screaming. While he watched, the courtyard below filled up with knights, armed and in mail. Five of them ran along the inner rampart of the compound wall and jumped down to the lower wall around his house.

  “They were looting all through that area over there,” Fulk said, coming up beside him. “Where that house is burning.”

  Frederick walked up and down the roof, his arms folded over his chest. It was chilly and he wished he’d brought the cloak. The mob had almost reached his house. A torch sailed over the wall, turning end over end, and fell into the courtyard, and a soldier ran over to put it out.

  The burning house fell in on itself with a crash that made Fulk swear. Frederick walked quickly over to the other side of the roof. He could just see the harbor from here, around the dome of the Patriarchate; the streets along the waterfront swarmed, and something down there was burning too, the glow lighting the square tower of the church of St. Andrew. He was too far from the Templars’ Quarter to see what was going on there.

  The mob had reached his house. Their shouts rang out—“Traitor . . . Heretic—” He kept his back to them and wished Corso would bring him the cloak. Ayub came over to him.

  “Lord, Balian of Sidon wishes to talk to you.”

  “I’ll be right there.” He squinted, trying to make out the ships in the harbor. Enrico would make sure nothing happened to them. He began to shudder uncontrollably with cold. ‘What if they burned and he had to wait here while they built new ones? He turned and went back to the other side of the roof.

  “Sire,” Balian called. He was riding his horse around the courtyard. “May we attack them?”

  Something flew over the wall and splashed on the courtyard stones. Frederick looked at Ayub. “What are they throwing?”

  Azub shrugged. “Rocks. Torches. Entrails. And shit.”

  “Well, it’s an interesting variation on stoning.” His face burned with embarrassment. Leaning over the edge of the roof, he called, “Balian, are they dangerous?”

  A volley of rocks and softer missiles pelted down around Balian, whose horse shied violently, snorting. “They can’t get in. It depends on what you mean by dangerous.”

  “Don’t hurt them unless you have to to keep them out.” He hunkered at the roof’s edge. The knights along the ramparts were shouting back at the mob, and the noise clogged up his ears. Balian swung his horse and rode around calling out orders.

  Fulk said, “One charge and they’d all go home—the ones who could still move to get there.”

  Frederick nodded. He looked down at the roof top and ran his fingers over the coarse stone. It would do no good, it would make them think they were important, and t
hey’d only riot again at the first opportunity. And there was no sense training people in street fighting. He wasn’t embarrassed anymore, just bored and cold. Looking up, he saw that the mob had set the house opposite his on fire.

  “They’ll burn the city down if we let them, Sire,” Fulk said.

  “That’s not my problem. The barons and the priests all say I have no control over the local operation, anyhow.” He grinned; it was the barons’ property that burned. Let them take care of their own. “Come on, let’s go back inside.”

  The Patriarch said, “This is obscene.”

  Frederick put his hands on the arms of his chair, stared at the old man’s gaunt, bad-tempered face, and looked over at the Grand Master of the Hospitallers. “Did you have something to say?”

  “The treaty itself is illegal,” the Hospitaller said. “As Regent of Jerusalem you had no right to make a truce with the infidels without the consent of the High Court and the Council.”

  The men behind him murmured and shuffled their feet. Frederick leaned his head back against the chair. This crowd packed the little room; it stank of sweat and dirt and their steaming breath, and they’d tracked in mud on the carpet. On either side of him, standing against the wall, his Saracens held their lances at salute and stared coldly at the knights staring at them.

  “Lord John,” Frederick said. “Perhaps you have a complaint to make as well?”

  “Only to repeat what all these others have said,” John d’Ibelin boomed in his orator’s voice. “The treaty is illegal, and to block off the Templars’ Quarter and the gates of the city with your troops is the foulest kind of insult. How can you expect—”

  The Grand Master came into the room, flanked by Tommaso and Filangieri, carrying Frederick’s cherrywood chest. He set it on the table and withdrew to one side, looking nowhere but at Frederick.

  “Your complaints are well taken,” Frederick said. They’d made him angry in the beginning, but now they only bored him, and he had to work to keep from showing it. “You are perfectly right, of course, from your viewpoint. However, you might bear in mind that the arrangement of a treaty for Jerusalem is an issue concerning all Christendom, not merely a collection of petty barons on the fringe of the Christian world—”

  John d’Ibelin said, “If you continue to insult—”

  “—and therefore ought to be the work of the only temporal office in Christendom with the power to speak for the entire community, which is mine, Lord John, and not yours. I did not sign that treaty as Regent of Jerusalem—”

  “You had yourself crowned when you are not the King—”

  “—but as the legate of Christendom. You don’t know what I crowned myself in Jerusalem, Lord John, you only know that I crowned myself, and while you’re not in possession of all the facts you had best keep your mouth shut.” He clenched his jaws, fighting down a rush of anger. John looked around at the others and snapped his gaze back to Frederick.

  “If you gentlemen will not keep the interests of the entire community in mind, someone must, and I find myself in a position to. You object because Jerusalem cannot be adequately defended against the Moslems. If you have to fight for Jerusalem to feel that she is yours, I contend you are not Christian. As for the actions I took to contain the Templars during last night’s interesting little display of civic order . . .”

  He looked at the Templars’ Grand Master, who stood near the window breathing heavily through his nose, and opened the cherry-wood chest. “I think, if, you can discard your personal hatred for me for a moment, you’ll find this justification enough.” He took the top two papers off the heap in the chest and laid them on the table, turned so that the men in front of him could read them. No one moved forward; the Patriarch craned his neck to see, but he was too far away to make them out.

  “This,” Frederick said, tapping the first page, “is a note from the Templars to the Sultan al-Kamil, advising him that my trip to the Jordan River, to the place where Christ was baptized, was the perfect moment to have me seized and killed.”

  The Hospitaller’s head flew up and the Patriarch jerked his hands. Frederick looked around at them—none of them looked at the Templar in their midst, only at him, the blood draining from their faces, their lips tight. Oh, well, he thought, that’s interesting; so most of you knew about it already. He indicated the other paper. “That’s a note from al-Kamil to me, full of amusing little remarks, that he sent along with the Templars’ letter.”

  The Templar said, “This is a lie. Those are forgeries.”

  “Oh, my. How guileless I am, to let al-Kamil dupe me so. To turn me against my own kind. I would like to point out to you, Sir Roger, that you are still alive, something which even I find surprising at times. There’s a lesson in that, which I hope you’ll learn. I hope all of you will learn it.”

  “You came here excommunicate,” the Patriarch said, and Frederick shut his eyes for a moment. “We are Christians, we hate and fear sin, and we hate and fear you as we fear sin. Against this crime you have committed, to pollute the holiest ground of our faith, no soft words of yours may prevail. You are damned, and it endangers our souls to stand in the same room with you, to breathe the air you breathe. You are an enemy worse than the Sultan, you are the hammer of the Church, you are Antichrist.”

  “As I said, you are entitled to your own viewpoint.”

  Lord John stepped forward. “You mock us, you think we’re so much less than you, but even while you sit there mocking us, His Holiness has won your kingdom from you. ‘Ephriam is like a dove, silly and without sense; they call to Egypt, they go to Syria.’ If you’d stayed where you belonged, you might still have Sicily as a refuge, heretic. What now? When you leave Acre, where can you go?”

  “To Sicily.” Frederick leaned back, smiling. “And I’m leaving tomorrow. There’s more to Hosea than doves and Ephriam, Lord John. ‘Yea, though they have hired among the nations, now will I gather them, and they shall sorrow a little for the burden of the king of princes.’ And if you think I’m blaspheming, gentlemen, wait until you hear what the Pope has to say about it. Get out of here, you’re making me angry.”

  They started, nervous as birds, and the men at the back of the room turned for the door. The Patriarch said, “I won’t leave until I hear what you mean to do about our demands.”

  “Nothing,” Frederick said, and stood up. “As I said, you have your viewpoint, gentlemen. But I have mine, and I prefer mine, and I’m in a position to enforce mine.” He looked at them a moment, watching them grow uncertain. “What’s the matter, fellow Christians? You stole it all in the first place, why can’t you realize that now I’ve stolen it from you? You have my leave.”

  The Hospitaller stepped forward. “Your Majesty—”

  “You have my leave.”

  The Patriarch set himself, although the others were leaving as fast as they could reach the door. Frederick looked into the old man’s dark, furious eyes, smiled, and said, “Ayub.”

  Ayub started around the long oak table. The Patriarch backed up two steps, stammering with amazement, and John d’Ibelin barged between them; the other Saracens moved up. They used their lances to shove the other men out of their way. John’s face was gray with shock—the Patriarch whirled and clawed his way toward the door.

  “Now you see why my guards are Saracens,” Frederick said, and left the room.

  “We’ll have to leave at daybreak,” Enrico said. “When the tides are ebbing. Do you want to go on board tonight, Sire?”

  Frederick shook his head. Corso and Giancarlo were taking off his heavy state robe, and he bent so that they could unhook the collar. “I’ll come, down in the morning. Make sure everybody else is on board by then—I won’t wait for them.” With the robe off, he went to the side door and looked into the next room. The Grand Master came in behind him.

  “Sire—”

  “Wait a moment.” He went back into the middle of the room—Corso helped him into his coat, standing behind him. Softly he said, “Wh
ere is Theophano?”

  Corso whispered, “She’s gone—she left while you were talking to the nobles.”

  “Oh.”

  For an instant everything froze; he could hear his voice, the sound hanging in the air. Abruptly his arms thrust into the sleeves of the coat and he swung around, and the room filled up with motion again—pages running back and forth, Enrico and the Grand Master talking. She didn’t wait to tell me good-by.

  “With your leave, Sire,” Enrico said, “I should—”

  “Yes.”

  Enrico went to the door, bowed, and left. The Grand Master came over to him. “Would you care for wine, Sire?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  Corso put a belt around his waist; he watched the old man pour the wine from the big gold ewer on the table. He felt as if everything he did he had to force himself to do—as if breathing were an act of will.

  “How upset were they? The barons.”

  “More scared than upset,” the Grand Master said. He brought over a cup and Frederick took it in his numb fingers. “And impressed. They’re considerably less sure now than they were before you spoke to them.”

  “Naturally.” He raised the cup and sipped at it. All this while he’d never really thought she’d go.

  “What impressed them most, I think, was when you called yourself the legate of Christendom. They believe you, and that in itself frightened them. They saw you differently than they had before. It was interesting, the way they reacted to your sending Ayub to chase out the Patriarch—in the anteroom they were calling it his fault, that he should never have defied you.”

  “They should have realized . . . that I had no reason to be good to them anymore.”

  His eyes burned, and he turned his back on the Grand Master, ashamed that the old man might see him cry. She’s gone, she left me. He even knew where she had gone; she would have found Mutu, she would go to Antioch with Mutu or through Mutu’s arrangements.