“Yes, sweetheart. You are going to see the King, and you must look your very best.”
Isabella at once sat down and stuck her feet out at her mother, but it was Rahel who came with the pair of embroidered slippers that matched the cap on Isabella’s head, while Maria Zoë fetched the embroidered surcoat. She and Rahel had done all the stitching themselves after learning that Maria Zoë had been summoned to court. A critical eye would have noticed that the professional needlewomen made more regular stitches and produced more symmetrical patterns, but Isabella would grow out of these things long before she was old enough to care.
“Now, sweetheart,” Maria Zoë began as she helped Isabella put her arms into the sleeves. “You have to understand that the King—”
“My brother!” Isabella remembered.
“Yes, your brother the King is very, very sick. He doesn’t look sick when he’s dressed up as he will be, but underneath his beautiful silk gloves his hands are dead.”
“Dead?” Isabella looked shocked.
“Yes. Dead and slowly rotting away. He cannot use his fingers—cannot move or feel them anymore. And that means he cannot reach out and take your hands in his or otherwise stroke and pat you like adults usually do. Nor should you be impertinent and reach out to him,” Maria Zoë warned.
Isabella’s expression suggested she was not at all tempted to try to touch something “dead.” Maria Zoë reached out and stroked her daughter’s shoulder. “You mustn’t be afraid, either. Your brother Baldwin is a very good man, and he is your guardian.”
This did not appear to mollify Isabella, and she abruptly buried her face in her mother’s skirts and asked, “Do we have to go? Do we have to go see a man with dead hands?”
“Yes, we do,” her mother told her firmly. “Straighten up and behave yourself.” Her tone of voice was one that broached no contradiction or disobedience. Isabella sighed deeply, stood upright, and took her mother’s hand.
Outside the King’s apartments, when the men-at-arms announced them, Maria Zoë sank down to Isabella’s height, kissed her on the cheek, and murmured in her ear, “Smile, sweetheart.”
Isabella turned big brown eyes on her that said silently, “You can command me to behave, but not to smile,” and solemnly the little girl walked beside her mother into the royal solar. Her big eyes searched the beautiful room with its glittering mosaic floor, glazed tile facings, and carved and painted furnishings, and stopped when she found a handsome youth with bright blond hair smiling at her. “So you’re Isabella!” he said warmly.
Isabella went stock still. “Are you the King?” she asked.
“No, I’m your brother.”
Isabella looked up at her mother reproachfully for not telling her she had two brothers.
“Isabella, look what I have here,” the youth coaxed her.
Isabella looked back at the beautiful youth. He had raised his arm and gestured with it, the hand limp at the end, toward his lap. Isabella noticed that he had something furry in it—and then it moved, and Isabella gasped with excitement. “Kittens!”
Before her mother could stop her, she rushed forward, halting just short of Baldwin, to look up and ask, “Oh, please, may I pet them?”
“You can do more than that,” Baldwin assured her. “You can choose which one you want to keep.”
“Oh, Mama! May I? May I have a kitten?” Isabella pleaded, looking anxiously over her shoulder to her mother.
Maria Zoë looked at Baldwin, and he smiled at her. “I have discovered bribery is a most effective means of winning friends—and I so want Isabella and me to be friends,” he pleaded with her.
How could she fault him for that? “Yes, darling,” she answered Isabella, “you may have a kitten.”
Isabella needed no more encouragement. She started petting first one kitten and then the others in turn. “Do they have names?” she asked the King, without taking her eyes off the kittens.
“Not yet,” he answered. “That is for you to give them.”
“This one is Blondy, and this one is Tiger, and this one is . . .” Isabella weighed her head from side to side, trying to decide on an appropriate name. “This one is Gluttony, because he wears a white bib so he can eat all the time,” Isabella declared solemnly, and frowned when the adults burst out laughing.
“I really don’t see why you have to see the King alone,” the Comte d’Edessa told Balian. “He’ll tell me everything you say to him anyway.”
Balian had seldom been so conscious of his utter helplessness. All he wanted to do was say goodbye to the youth he had come to love so well, but he had no desire to show his emotions in front of this man, much less his venomous sister-in-law, the Queen Mother. Yet he could hardly insist on a private interview. He had no right to one, and he couldn’t think of a fabricated excuse fast enough, either.
Balian briefly considered going without saying farewell, but he remembered how upset Baldwin had been when Queen Maria Zoë did the same thing two years ago.
But that had been a different Baldwin. Maybe the new Baldwin wouldn’t care if he just went away. Maybe it would be the best thing for both of them. . . .
“You can sit there until summoned.” Edessa pointed to one of the chests along the wall, which doubled as a bench. It was well worn along the side by the many heels that had swung and rubbed against it in hours of waiting on royalty.
Balian looked at the chest and shook his head. “I’d rather wait standing.”
“You may wait a long time,” Edessa told him with a shrug. “My sister’s in there with her lover, and she’s vowed not to leave until the King has made him Marshal of Jerusalem.”
Balian started. For the last week the Queen Mother had been flaunting her latest bedmate as if he were a trophy. To his credit, Aimery de Lusignan had the decency to look embarrassed by the flagrant way she favored him, and even tried to maintain a modicum of modesty. But Agnes de Courtney was not a woman to be trifled with. When Lusignan would not come and stand behind her at the high table, she swept down off the dais and demonstratively took a seat beside him at one of the lower tables. When they sat together, Agnes could not keep her hands off him, and when he came to her apartments, she made sure that the whole household knew about it by calling for wine and snacks and even music while he was with her. It was as if she could only convince herself that she had captured this virile young lover by seeing the shocked expressions on other people’s faces. When Balian remembered the indifference she had shown his brother—her husband—it made him boil inwardly and increased the antipathy he felt for her, but he could hardly blame Aimery de Lusignan for exploiting the situation.
Heraclius, meanwhile, had been sent back to Caesarea to “do whatever it is bishops do.” It was rumored that Agnes had advised him: “Be a priest for a change.” And when rebuked by the Patriarch for her behavior, she had demanded to know why she should make do with a pretty boy when she could have a real man?
The banging of the double doors to the audience chamber interrupted Balian’s thoughts, and he was confronted by a beaming Aimery de Lusignan. Lusignan drew up at the sight of Balian, and his smile broadened. “Ah! Sir Balian! You can be the first to hear the good news! I have just been appointed Marshal of Jerusalem!”
“Congratulations, my lord,” Balian replied, bowing his head politely. He didn’t dislike Aimery de Lusignan as a man; he simply resented the way he had come by this prestigious and important position.
“No need to look so disapproving,” Aimery told him, laughing. He was in such a good mood that he flung his arm over Balian’s shoulder and added, “I am not the kind of man to forget my wife’s relatives, Balian.”
“Balian?” the voice called from inside the audience chamber, and it made everyone turn around. “Balian?” the King called again, his voice clearly nearer. “Where are you?”
“Here, your grace.”
“Why did no one tell me you were here?” Baldwin reached the doorway and looked pointedly at his uncle. Edessa bowed his h
ead silently without explaining himself.
“Balian, come in, come in!” The King gestured to the audience room behind him, and Balian followed him, with Edessa and Lusignan in his wake. In the middle of the room, the King turned around and faced Balian. “I have heard rumors, Balian,” Baldwin told him earnestly. “Rumors that you have quit my service and given your sword to the Archbishop of Tyre.”
“Neither rumor is true, your grace,” Balian answered steadily. “I came today to request that you release me from your service. Until you have done so, I cannot give my sword to another lord.”
“Why do you want to leave my service?” Baldwin asked bluntly.
“Because I am no longer needed here, your grace.” Balian looked pointedly at Edessa and Lusignan. “You have other advisers and servants now.”
Baldwin looked past Balian to his uncle and his newly appointed marshal, and then back at Balian. “You think I have rewarded you ill for your loyalty, don’t you?”
“No, your grace. I simply think it is time I looked after my own interests—now that you and the Kingdom are in such good hands that my services are superfluous.”
“And you think your interests are safer with the Chancellor than with me?”
“The Archbishop of Tyre has promised me a position of responsibility in his household, your grace.”
“And what would that be, Balian? Chasing after wayward clerks in the town brothels or guarding the Archbishop’s wine cellars from the covetous rabble? What can he offer you that would equal being Constable of Ascalon?”
The Queen Mother gasped, and Balian turned to look at his sister-in-law with narrowed eyes, but Aimery de Lusignan quickly crossed over to her and took her in his arms. He whispered something in her ear, and she dissolved into giggles. Balian turned and looked at Edessa, but the Count had a mask in place. Balian turned back to the King and asked, disbelieving, “Constable of Ascalon?”
“It is near Ibelin,” the King remarked, as if by way of explanation.
It was also one of the most exposed, vulnerable, and strategically important cities in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It had been in Egyptian hands until 1153, and as long as the Egyptians held it, they had used it as a base from which to raid deep into the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Indeed, the castle at Ibelin had been built as a bulwark against such raids. Balian’s father had taken part in several attempts to seize the city, and his brother Hugh had been one of the commanders at the seven-month siege that finally brought the city under Christian control.
The loss of Ascalon had been a serious defeat to the Fatimid Caliphate, and there could be no question that Salah-ad-Din would want to take it back—if nothing else, to shore up his weak position with his Egyptian subjects. To be Constable of Ascalon was no luxury and no empty reward. It was a huge responsibility, and a mark of trust. Nor could Balian forget that his father’s first step toward a barony of his own had been his appointment as Constable of Jaffa. “I am overwhelmed, your grace,” Balian murmured sincerely.
The King smiled. “I thought you might be—but you have been hard to find of late,” he replied, in gentle reproach to Balian for avoiding the court in recent weeks.
Balian almost remarked that all Baldwin would have had to do to find him would have been to send for him—but he bit his tongue; the recipient of such an honor should not bemoan the manner or timing of the gift. Meanwhile the King had turned to Lusignan. “And what say you, Marshal?”
“Good choice, your grace. I couldn’t have thought of a better man for the post—or a better post for the man.”
Balian looked sharply at Aimery, but he was still grinning, his arm around the Queen Mother’s shoulders, and he seemed completely sincere. His goodwill, furthermore, had clearly silenced any objections from Agnes de Courtney, who Balian was sure would have begrudged him anything if left to her own counsel. Instead, because of Aimery’s support, she was smiling benevolently as if it had all been her idea. Balian looked again at Edessa, who shrugged. “I hear the palace of the Constable is in a poor state of repair.”
“Who is now the Constable of Ascalon?” Balian asked, frowning, thinking that he was in a bad position to be making powerful enemies, regardless of the King’s favor. Such favor was notoriously fickle—as he had experienced over the last several months.
“You!” the King insisted, smiling.
“But who has been up to now?”
“Godfrey de Hebron was the man appointed by my father, but he died of a stomach ailment about six months ago, and Tripoli didn’t get around to appointing a replacement.”
Balian was comforted by this answer, because it indicated no one was being pushed aside for his sake, and there was a precedent of appointing the younger brothers of Crown vassals to the post. Baldwin appeared to have thought this through, Balian concluded, and he looked again at Aimery de Lusignan. It struck him that Aimery was not such a poor choice for Marshal of Jerusalem, either. He had been in the Kingdom five years, he had married into an established family, he had proved his courage during the attack on Homs, and he certainly had a good head on his shoulders. Balian started to suspect that that appointment, too, was more calculated than it first appeared—and not owing entirely to the Queen Mother’s favor.
King Baldwin was choosing his officers from among men he thought were loyal to him—not to Tripoli, or Antioch, or anyone else in the Kingdom. Edessa because he was his uncle and had no other base of power, Lusignan because he was a man equally dependent on royal favor, and Balian. The young King, Balian concluded, knew exactly what he was doing.
“Your grace.” Balian dropped to one knee and offered his folded hands. “If you see fit to bestow this honor upon me, I will serve you—as I always have—with all my strength and all my mind and all my heart.”
Baldwin smiled at him. “I know.” He enclosed Balian’s hands in his limp, gloved fingers, and then bent and kissed Balian on the forehead. “With the help of God, Balian d’Ibelin, hold Ascalon for me—and for Christ.”
Chapter 7
Ascalon, August 1176
BALIAN AND WALTER APPROACHED ASCALON FROM the east, riding directly from Jerusalem. Balian had considered a detour to Ramla to tell his brother of his appointment, but his impatience to take command in Ascalon was too great. Barry would hear the news soon enough; it was more important to secure his unexpected reward.
At this time of year, when the heat and dust was at its worst, Balian chose not to exhaust his horses and took two days for the trip, including midday breaks. He and Walter spent the one night en route at Bethgibelin, where they were refreshed and feted by the lord, and had a good discussion with the local Hospitaller commander about the growing threat from Egypt and Salah-ad-Din.
As they left the mountains behind, the weather became scorching, as the fields lay fallow after the harvest and the dust blew across them in tiny cyclones. By late afternoon, however, the white walls of Ascalon came into view, beyond a plain green with citrus and pomegranate orchards against the blue backdrop of the glistening Mediterranean. It looked like paradise.
As they drew nearer, a sea breeze reached them, drying the sweat on their horses and fluttering their surcoats and the canvas covering the luggage on the packhorse Walter was leading. The breeze offered them welcome relief from the heat.
The walls of Ascalon were built upon earth mounds that enclosed the rubble from the walls of earlier centuries. As they drew nearer, Balian could see where the Byzantine walls ended short of the top and new, brilliant white masonry, not yet weathered with time, increased their height by as much as ten feet in places. The walls had also been reinforced by massive barbicans before the gates.
They soon found themselves caught in the stream of traffic heading for the gate. In contrast to the traffic into Jerusalem, however, there were hardly any pilgrims. Ascalon had no important pilgrimage sites, and most pilgrims from the west landed farther north, at Jaffa or Acre. Instead of pilgrims, the road was jammed with Egyptian camel caravans, trains of Armenian pack mules,
and local farmers with ox-carts. The pace was torturously slow, apparently bottlenecking at the gate.
Unwilling to slow down to the pace of the oxen, mules, and camels, Balian turned off the road and trotted along beside it, ducking low branches and jumping over irrigation ditches with his destrier on the lead behind him, and Walter with the packhorse in his wake. As he cut back onto the road at the gate, it became clear why traffic was backing up: the guards here were actually checking cargoes and questioning each merchant.
Balian drew up beside the guards, who all wore tunics with the five crosses of Jerusalem sewn on their left breast. His palfrey was anxious to find feed and water and flung his head in irritation, splattering the guards with froth, while the destrier was so fractious he tried to bolt. Balian jerked on the lead twice to make him pay attention. The man-at-arms looked up, annoyed. With inner relish, Balian drew his commission from inside his gambeson and handed it to the man. The royal soldier looked at the folded parchment blankly, turned it over, saw the royal seal, and his eyes widened. “Sir?” he asked with a flickering glance at Balian’s heels. “You come from the King?”
“I do. Balian d’Ibelin. Constable of Ascalon.” Balian liked the sound of that.
“My lord!” the man responded, then turned and started shouting. A moment later a handful of other men, similarly dressed, spilled out of the barbican, and a red-faced man with a bushy beard and eyebrows came over to stand at Balian’s stirrup. The guard handed his sergeant the parchment, but the latter was as illiterate as his subordinate and contented himself with the same question: “You are from the King?”
“Yes. I have been appointed Constable of Ascalon.”
“My lord!” the sergeant echoed his subordinate. “We had no warning, have made no preparations. Ah, how many are you?” He looked back along the column of caravans and farm wagons, as if expecting to see an escort of dozens of knights and scores of mounted men-at-arms.
“Myself and my squire,” Balian answered.
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