Balian hastened into the ward to greet his brother’s party. In the fading light it was hard to distinguish the Baron from his knights and men-at-arms. The horses were caked in mud right to their knees, their bellies and haunches splattered with it, their tails matted, their manes dripping wet. The riders wore their hooded cloaks pulled as far forward as possible. Balian noticed, however, that a child was sitting in front of one of the riders, and so he went first to that rider and held up his arms. “I’ll take Eschiva,” he offered.
“Balian! Thank you! I’m so sorry!” It was the voice of his sister-in-law, Richildis. She lifted her daughter up out of the saddle as she spoke, and Balian took the little girl in his own arms. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering, so Balian took her on the crook of his arm and put his own cloak over her to shield her from the rain and cold before turning to help Richildis down. Richildis gratefully turned her bedraggled mare over to one of the grooms, and gave Balian a hug followed by a kiss on both cheeks. “I’m so sorry!” she repeated.
Balian believed her. She had been married to Barry when he was eleven and she only ten, and she had lived with her husband’s family and enjoyed Hugh’s benevolent guardianship for nearly five years until Barry came of age and set up his own household. “It was such a shock,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
“We can talk about this inside,” Barry ordered, coming up behind his wife. The Baron of Ramla, and now Ibelin as well, towered over his wife. He was a good six feet tall and broad-shouldered. He wore his blond hair long, and he kept his face clean shaven except for a mustache that drooped to his chin.
Balian didn’t contradict him, but led the way out of the ward by the outside stairs, which gave access to a hall running along the inside of the western wall of the castle. Here a fire was blazing and many of the household had gathered to keep warm and dry, but Balian continued through the hall to the solar, located in the chamber beyond the high table. Balian had had the foresight to lay a fire several hours ago. There were now enough embers to give off substantial heat, as well as flames still burning around the log. Balian set his niece down in front of the fire, and turned to take Richildis’ and Barry’s wet cloaks from them. The rain had soaked through their cloaks and left water stains on their shoulders and chests. Handing off the wet cloaks to Alexis, who was waiting attentively, Balian ordered him to bring warm robes from Hugh’s wardrobe for the new arrivals. “I don’t really have anything for Eschiva,” Balian apologized, looking toward his niece, “except some blankets.”
“That’s fine. We need to get her to bed as soon as she’s had something to eat,” Richildis answered.
“Is that bitch Agnes here yet?” Barry asked his younger brother, moving up to hold his hands to the fire after wiping his wet forehead dry with the back of his sleeve.
“Barry! Watch your tongue!” Richildis admonished. “She’s your brother’s widow—not to mention the mother of the heir to the throne.”
“Both of which facts are to be deeply regretted!” Barry countered, unabashed. “The boy she gave the King has turned out to be a leper, and the only babies she gave Hugh were stillborn. I say the woman’s cursed!”
Balian and Richildis shared a brief look. It wasn’t that they disagreed with Barry’s negative opinion of Agnes de Courtney, but they deplored Barry’s tendency to be blunt and uncompromising to a fault.
“Hugh should never have agreed to take her back after she’d jilted him to go to Amalric’s bed! It damn near broke his heart to come out of Egyptian captivity to find his fickle ‘bride’ had up and married someone else!”
“He didn’t have any choice,” Balian reminded his brother patiently. “He was legally betrothed to her, and could not marry anyone else without a formal annulment. Her marriage to Amalric was not legal—”
“In which case, Amalric’s children by her are bastards, including that leper boy,” Barry pointed out.
“The High Court agreed to recognize them when he was crowned,” Balian reminded his brother unnecessarily; Barry knew this just as well as Balian did.
“And I don’t know why we’re talking about such things at a time like this!” Richildis told the men. “Your brother is not yet in his grave, and all you can talk about is whether his widow’s children by another man are legitimate!”
“There’s nothing we can do for Hugh now,” Barry countered, “but I don’t trust that damned woman not to lay claim to Ibelin. She’s as like as not to claim it as her widow’s portion, and I’ll tell you right now she’ll have to fight me for it.”
“Oh, Barry! Don’t say things like that. King Amalric settled a substantial income on her when he set her aside, and she hasn’t lived at Ibelin in years.”
“She’s a covetous bitch!” Barry answered. “And she will try to get her claws on Ibelin any way she can.”
“But she has no legal claim,” Richildis started, only to fall silent as the solar door opened and Alexis returned laden with robes, blankets, and linen towels. Leaving these, he departed again in answer to Balian’s urgings to have the kitchen send up mulled wine and hot food.
Meanwhile, Richildis stripped her six-year-old daughter out of her wet clothes and rubbed her dry before the fire, then wrapped her in one of the soft blankets Alexis had brought. Her husband also stripped and dried himself, pulled a fur-lined robe over his head, and belted it with his own belt, as it was otherwise too wide for him. He took a deep breath. “I suppose I should go pay my respects. Where is Hugh’s body laid out?”
“Before the altar of the crypt,” Balian answered.
“Let’s put Eschiva to bed first,” Richildis suggested, but her husband waved the suggestion aside. “You put her to bed. I’m going to pay my respects to my brother.”
Richildis seemed to want to protest, but then thought better of it and let her husband stalk out of the solar, by the spiral stairs carved in the thickness of the walls that led both to the bedchamber on the floor above and the family crypt below.
After Barry disappeared down the stairs, there was an awkward moment of silence. Then Balian took hold of a chair and placed it closer to the fire. “Come sit here to warm up and dry off,” he urged his sister-in-law. “You must be exhausted.”
Richildis took a deep breath and then admitted, “I am.” She collected her skirts, weighted down by water and mud, and sank into the chair. Here she removed her ruined shoes and held her feet out toward the fire. Her once-white stockings were so dirty they looked as if she were still wearing shoes. Balian, meanwhile, moved another chair to the fire, sat down in it himself, and pulled Eschiva onto his lap. The six-year-old was so exhausted that she dropped her head on his chest and fell asleep almost immediately.
“You’re better with her than Barry is,” her mother observed.
“That’s because I have the luxury of being her uncle,” Balian answered with a laugh. “I can be nice all the time, while Barry has to make sure she grows up into a proper young lady.”
“How are you doing, Balian?” Richildis asked next, searching his face.
Balian looked away, into the fire, and did not answer right away. At length he admitted, “I’m still in shock. I knew the day would come when Hugh would be gone, but our father was over sixty when he died. I thought I had another decade—or at least that I’d have more warning, a long, lingering decline.” He paused, reflecting on what he’d said, and then remembered his manners and turned to ask his sister-in-law, “And you? How are you doing? It’s harder to bury a child than a brother.”
His question caught her off guard. Cold and tired as she was, her defenses were weakened. The reference to the daughter she’d buried six months earlier brought tears to her eyes, and she found herself shaking her head and trying to pull herself together. “What woman doesn’t bury a child or two?” she asked back, but the tears couldn’t be stopped.
Balian wanted to kick himself for raising the issue. He would have reached out to her if Eschiva hadn’t been snoring softly in his a
rms, preventing him from moving.
The moment passed. Richildis wiped the tears away with her hands and turned a twisted smile to Balian. “Don’t think you were wrong to ask. It means more to me that you remember my Stephanie, than that you’ve made me cry. Barry—Barry acts as if he’d never had another daughter. Or as if girls don’t matter at all. He wants a son so badly. . . .” She covered her face with her hands.
It was a not a pretty face: Richildis had been endowed with too large a nose in too narrow a face and eyes set too close together. But Balian did not see Richildis as a woman, just as a sister. It hurt him to see her so distressed, and he recognized that the long, wet journey had laid emotions bare that she otherwise concealed. He took his time answering, trying to think how best he might comfort her. “The barons of Jerusalem need sons, Hilde,” Balian reminded her gently. “Without sons who can grow up to bear arms, the Kingdom is defenseless. But that doesn’t mean we don’t value our daughters.”
“I know,” Richildis answered wearily, dropping her hands to her lap and gazing into the fire. “I know.”
Agnes de Courtney arrived the next day. She was now thirtysix years old and had never been a beauty. Her value lay in the fact that she was the daughter of the Comte d’Edessa, and although the County of Edessa had been lost in 1144 and her brother held the title only nominally, the family was still well connected and powerful. She had waited out the rain, and arrived escorted by a dozen men-at-arms.
Balian dutifully went to meet her as she emerged from the barbican gate into the ward. “Balian,” she greeted him; “always such a good boy. Hugh’s darling.” Her smile was fake. “Is your older brother here yet?”
“Barry and Hilde arrived last night,” Balian answered.
“In the rain? Foolish of them.”
Balian didn’t answer; he just helped Agnes out of the litter. Unlike Richildis, who had been dressed in mourning, Hugh’s widow was wearing a bright-blue cloak over a red gown with elaborate gold embroidery. Her white veils were likewise trimmed with red and gold ribbons. She caught Balian’s look of disapproval and snapped at him, “What did you expect? A grieving widow? Hugh was never anything but a nuisance to me! Now at last I’m free of him.”
“Why bother to come to the funeral, then?” Balian asked back.
“To gloat, dear boy. To have the triumph of living longer. One day, when you grow up, maybe you’ll understand.”
“I hope not.”
Henri d’Ibelin, the youngest Ibelin brother, was the last to arrive. He was twenty-one, just fifteen months younger than Balian, and had been knighted at Christmas the previous year. He proudly wore his golden spurs and rode the stallion his lord, the Baron of Oultrejourdain, had given him at his knighting. He also carried a shield with Oultrejourdain’s arms, for he had chosen to remain in Oultrejourdain’s household rather than return to a “home” he hardly knew. He was a slighter, shorter version of Barry: blond like their father, with a nose that hung straight from his forehead like the nosepiece of a Norman helmet, a throwback to his grandfather of Ramla. To his credit, although he had hardly known Hugh, he behaved soberly and respectfully. He was dressed in mourning and knelt at his brother’s coffin for half an hour on arrival.
Meanwhile the other guests were arriving for the funeral. The ten knights who owed fealty to Ibelin came from their manors with their entire families to keep a vigil and, of course, swear fealty to the new baron. Many of the freeholders from the villages belonging to the barony also streamed into Ibelin to pay their last respects. These were mostly Latin settlers, men and families, who had come out to the Holy Land after it had been reclaimed for Christianity by the First Crusade. They were free men, not serfs, and many were tradesmen: blacksmiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and tinkers, butchers and brewers, potters and weavers. Some of the tenant farmers from the Ibelin domain also came: native Christians, both Jacobites and Maronites, who had been tenants to Muslim lords before the crusaders came. The few Muslim tenants kept their distance, however, unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Christian burial rites.
The most important guests, however, were the Barons of Bethgibelin, Hebron, Blanchegarde, and Arsur, all of whom came with their wives—while King Amalric sent his seneschal to represent him, along with his “deepest regrets” that the business of the Kingdom prevented him from attending the funeral himself. Everyone knew that the real reason he didn’t come was to avoid confronting his discarded wife, Agnes.
Balian was kept busy ensuring that there was accommodation for all these guests and their servants, men-at-arms, and horses, and that there was food and drink for new arrivals and a daily main meal, while Barry accepted the condolences and presided at the high table. Balian didn’t mind this division of labor because this was the natural order of things, and being busy helped him to focus on the present rather than grieving for the past or worrying about the future.
He was in the stables, seeing to yet another cavalcade of horses, when Henri sought him out. “So,” Henri started, plopping himself down on a bale of straw, his hands on his hips. “Did we get anything?”
“What do you mean?” Balian asked.
“Does it all go to Barry?”
“Of course.”
“Ramla, Mirabelle, and Ibelin? That’s three baronies, and three of us. They could have been divided between us. I’ve heard Barry say he doesn’t plan to return here anyway. He’s going to stay at Ramla because it’s more comfortable.” Ibelin had been built in 1141, when Ascalon was still in Saracen hands, as a border fortress. It was a defensible castle, but hardly a palace. Ramla had been an Arab city, destroyed in an earthquake centuries before the First Crusade and half buried in sand dunes when the Christians reoccupied it, but it had never been of military importance, and the castle there was more a residence than a fortress.
Balian nodded. “I can understand that.”
“If he’s going to stay in Ramla, why can’t he give one of us Ibelin?”
Balian shrugged. “He could, but he doesn’t have to. By right, he inherits all three.”
“And you accept that?”
“Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”
Henri snorted contemptuously and kicked at some manure that had been dropped in the aisle between the stalls. “Oultrejourdain says that while the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the meek, the Kingdom of Jerusalem belongs to the bold.”
“Bold is not the same thing as covetous. Our father earned his barony with his sword.”
“At a time when the Kingdom was expanding. Times have changed.”
Balian didn’t answer right away. Henri was right. The days when the Kingdom of Jerusalem was pushing back the Saracens, taking city after city, and expanding the territory under Christian control were over. Since the capture of Ascalon almost twenty years ago there had been no more significant territorial acquisitions, and that meant no new fiefdoms that could be awarded to loyal but landless knights. At length he reminded his younger brother, “Greed is a deadly sin, Henri.”
“Is it? I don’t see other men being punished for it.”
“Not in this life.”
“I’ll repent on my deathbed,” Henri declared flippantly, adding, “I honestly don’t see why Barry should have it all.”
“Then talk to him about it,” Balian suggested.
“I will. I just wanted to give you the chance to come with me,” Henri countered.
“No.”
When the funeral was over and Hugh d’Ibelin sealed in a tomb beside his father, the guests dispersed. To the relief of the Ibelin brothers, Agnes left, too, sarcastically wishing them well as she settled herself in her litter. And then the brothers were alone together. Although Balian didn’t witness the confrontation between his brothers, he learned of it when Henri stormed out of the treasury, slamming doors and shouting for his squire to tack and load their horses. Henri almost ran Balian down in the courtyard as he spurred his stallion toward the drawbridge.
Balian sidestepped but reached up and caught his brother
’s bridle, pulling the surprised stallion to a swirling, protesting standstill.
“Let go of my horse!” Henri demanded.
“Don’t leave in anger, Henri,” Balian countered. “I know we hardly know each other, but we are brothers.”
“Tell that to Barry! He can’t expect my support for nothing! Now let me go.”
“Wait one day,” Balian urged. “Let your temper cool down.”
“No! Let me go!”
Balian hesitated—but he realized he didn’t have any more arguments, because he knew this brother too little. He released the bridle and stepped back. Henri spurred away, his squire and packhorse in his wake.
That night in the solar, Barry turned on Balian. “Do you know what Henri dared demand of me?”
“No, but I can guess.”
Barry snorted. “And what about you? What are your plans now?”
Balian shrugged. “Hugh suggested I go to Jerusalem.”
“Don’t tell me you still have romantic notions about winning fame and fortune by great deeds?” he asked with contempt. Then he added condescendingly, “It’s time you grew up, Balian, and recognized that earning honor with great deeds is for the romances and the songs of troubadours, but not relevant in today’s world. Face it,” he continued: “nowadays kingdoms and baronies are inherited rather than won by the sword. Look what happened to Reynald de Châtillon when he tried to seize Cyprus by force.”
Balian bristled at the suggestion that he was a man like Reynald de Châtillon, a brutal adventurer with no respect for the Church or his feudal overlord. “I have no desire to imitate Reynald de Châtillon!” he snapped at his brother.
Barry laughed, and too late Balian realized his brother had been baiting him. “Even in our father’s day, winning a fortune by the sword took longer than the alternatives.”
When Balian refused to answer, Barry continued, “Your problem, Balian, is that you’re not acquisitive enough. You need to be greedier if you’re ever going to make something of yourself.”
Knight of Jerusalem Page 2