Knight of Jerusalem

by Helena P. Schrader

Remembering these words, he was also reminded of the nights he had spent with Zoë in this very bed on five different visits over the last year. Had that been so terrible a sin that God would now punish him for it? He did not think so, but he added another prayer nevertheless: “If my sins offend you, Christ, then punish me—not Ascalon.”

  Father Michael had not slept in two days. It was easy for Father Laurence to give him responsibility for feeding the refugees and then turn his mind to other problems. Father Laurence did have other problems, and Michael recognized that. A city under siege (or about to be under siege) needed to have clean water supplies, it needed infirmaries, and it had to have carefully controlled rations. Father Laurence organized members of the household to guard the most important cisterns and wells in the city to prevent them from being contaminated or seized for private use (since no fighting men could be spared for this guard duty). He made sure the bakeries had firewood to keep their ovens heated, because the need for bread in the days to come would be enormous. He set about doing an inventory of the city’s reserves of grain, meat, and wine, while the Hospitallers naturally set to work preparing for the expected wounded.

  Yet Michael was not someone who could see dehydrated children vomiting, feet lacerated to the bone, or old people so disoriented that they could only rock back and forth singing lullabies, without being moved. “Feeding” the refugees meant going to them, seeing their condition, and hearing their stories. The bulk of the refugees had fled long before their own homes and fields were threatened, responding to the flight of those farther south or the sight of smoke on the horizon, but some of the refugees had escaped only by the grace of God.

  One boy, no more than fourteen or fifteen, had been in the outhouse when the Saracen cavalry overran his father’s farm. He had seen the mounted Saracens chasing his parents and siblings around in the little farmyard like frightened livestock. He had watched the turbaned cavalrymen laughing and joking with one another while his loved ones screamed in terror and pain as they were hacked to pieces.

  A young mother had seen her young son pierced by an arrow as he ran to her for safety in a cellar. He had died in her arms and she held him still, until Michael pried her cramped hands away from the stiffened body and laid the child in a newly dug grave.

  Michael had not just fed the refugees—he had listened to them, prayed with them, and tried to comfort them. But he was only nineteen, and he was at the end of his strength. After a young mother died in his arms from the injuries she had sustained falling off a wagon while fleeing over rugged terrain, Michael stumbled out of the caravansary and walked blindly down the street, oblivious to the outraged demands of the woman’s husband. “You can’t just walk away!” the man shouted. “You have to bury her! And what about the kids? I can’t look after two toddlers! The baby’s still at breast! What am I supposed to do with an unweaned baby?”

  That pierced Michael’s consciousness enough for him to turn around. He went back, picked up the squalling baby, and left a second time. The man was still demanding a burial and asking about the other children, but Michael paid him no heed. He had a single mission: to bring the baby to the Hospitaller orphanage.

  The sisters at the orphanage took one look at Michael and whisked the baby out of his arms. Then one of the women made Michael sit down, and a moment later he had a jug of ale in his hand. “Drink that,” she ordered briskly.

  “There are so many refugees,” Michael muttered.

  “Yes, and many more townsfolk able to look after them,” the Hospitaller sister answered firmly. “What you need, brother, is to lie down for a wee bit and get your strength back. When was the last time you had a bite to eat yourself?”

  Michael shook his head. “I’m not hungry. They hacked people to pieces!” he protested. “Just carved them up while still alive!”

  The sister laid her hand on his shoulder. It was a gesture of comfort, yet Michael could feel her fingers were trembling, too, and felt guilty for his outburst. “We have strong walls,” he told her, repeating a litany he had said a thousand times already to the refugees. “We have strong walls.”

  “And strong hearts,” the Hospitaller sister answered. “Now come. Lie down right here.”

  “I haven’t heard Mass—except for the dead—in two days,” Michael protested. “And I need to confess my sins.”

  “Certainly, but not at this moment,” the sister insisted. “Lie down.” She led him to a wooden bed frame filled with straw, apparently the night watchman’s bed. Michael fell more than lay down in it, and sleep closed over him instantly.

  He was woken by anxious voices in the room next door. “It’s certain, then?” a woman asked.

  “Sir Balian has ordered the Gaza Gate closed. Anyone seeking admittance now must come around to the Jerusalem Gate.”

  “The smoke we saw earlier, then?”

  “Yes. They’re burning everything they can’t put on their camels. One of our brothers said the Templars counted over two hundred camels without burdens—brought along just to carry the loot they expect to seize.”

  “But they bypassed Gaza; maybe they’ll bypass Ascalon?”

  “Why attack a Templar castle bristling with knights and sergeants ready to find martyrdom, when they can take a rich city with only a handful of knights to defend it? Ascalon is the prize. The Saracens have never been reconciled to her loss.”

  Michael dragged himself upright, feeling dizzy. He had a splitting headache and all his limbs ached. He was aware of hunger, too. He had to eat and drink something if he was to be of any use to anyone. He struggled to get up over the wooden edge of the box bed and got unsteadily to his feet, looking around the room to orient himself. Just to his left was the door through which the voices came, and to his right—

  The door burst open and a Hospitaller sergeant broke in. He did not see Michael but plunged on, tearing open the next door to blurt out, “Horsemen are riding straight for the Jerusalem Gate. Hundreds of them. We’ve been outflanked and are going to be taken from the east!”

  Even as he spoke, Michael heard the alarm bells on the walls take up a wild clamor. In the street men were running, shouting as they went: “Get to the Jerusalem Gate! Reinforce the Jerusalem Gate!”

  Ducking out the door to stand in the doorway, Michael lifted his eyes to the wall itself and saw men silhouetted against the orange light of dusk, moving purposefully along the wall walk. It was hard to tell in this light, but the fluttering surcoat of the leading man suggested it was Sir Balian himself, and the figure trailing right behind him seemed so familiar it could only be his brother Daniel.

  Michael hesitated, trying to decide where he would be needed most. His brain said: the refugees. They would surely be thrown into panic by this latest news. But his youth drew him toward the scene of the action. He cut between the kitchen gardens and zigzagged through familiar alleyways until he was at the foot of one of the stairways built on the inside of the wall to give access to the wall walk. Taking his cassock in his fist, he mounted the stairs as fast as he could and went immediately to the parapet to look out.

  Darkness was settling very rapidly, which was a comfort, since Salah-ad-Din surely wouldn’t launch an assault on the city at night. They would have at least one night to rest and eat and collect their courage. But even as he thought this, he made out the large column of horses coming inexorably toward the Jerusalem Gate. It was like an evil serpent weaving through the contours of the land as the horsemen followed the road. He stared at the approaching monster, transfixed with a sense of doom—and then jerked himself out of his trance, crossed himself, and began reciting the rosary as he hurried toward the Jerusalem Gate. He was fighting panic, reinforced by the sense of the earth rumbling under him. It was like a slow earthquake, he thought, and then he realized it was the sound of hundreds and hundreds of hooves on the earth outside. “Oh, Christ, protect us!” he pleaded helplessly.

  Wild shouting had broken out ahead of him, but it wasn’t curses or shouts of defiance as it sho
uld have been. Someone was shouting, “Open the gate! Open the gate!”

  Traitor! Surely no one would heed him? But fear that this man had accomplices drove Michael to run faster. Before he could take a dozen steps, the strap on one of his sandals broke. He removed it and continued barefoot until the sound of the gates crashing against the interior of the barbican paralyzed him with terror. The next instant the hooves echoed inside the barbican, as the head of that ominous snake of horsemen surged into the city.

  Michael did not know what to do. Lamed with horror, he stared down into the streets of the city, expecting to see turbaned horsemen hacking at terrified townsmen—and caught his breath at the sight of knights in helmets and carrying lances. Only now did he think to look at the banner, and almost fell off the wall walk as he dropped to his knees in wonder. It was the crosses of Jerusalem—and below it, on a gray stallion, was a young man with a crown on the brow of his helmet.

  “Jerusalem!” Michael gasped, and around him more and more people were shouting it out. “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Jerusalem has come!”

  Demetrius was in a frenzy, trying to put together a meal fit for a king without any warning and after days of preparing for a siege rather than a banquet. Mathewos, meanwhile, was putting two horses in every stall, but still couldn’t find places for all the horses of the King’s entourage. Dawit and Daniel were running relays with wine and water for the high table, and couldn’t believe what had happened to them.

  “I thought he was a leper!” Daniel exclaimed to Dawit in the arcade in front of the room Balian had turned into a hall, as he traded an empty pitcher for a full one from his fellow squire. “But he’s beautiful!”

  “He rides very well,” Dawit agreed.

  “You have to see him up close!” Daniel urged.

  “Do you think they will ever have enough to drink?” Dawit retorted skeptically, peering through the door at the overcrowded room.

  “And that’s only half of them,” Daniel answered in amazement. “More than two hundred knights with the Baron of Sidon were sent to the Bishop’s palace.”

  “I didn’t know there were so many knights in the whole Kingdom!” Dawit admitted, letting his eyes linger on the men in chain mail and long swords choking the little improvised hall. All his life he had seen knights only in ones or twos—until the Hospitallers mustered all ten of their knights at one time three days ago. Now there appeared to be hundreds of them here.

  He would have been surprised to learn that his lord was nearly as amazed as he was. Not that Balian had not seen so many knights assembled, but he had never thought to see them here—and even less to have his sovereign at his table at a time like this. For even as King Baldwin beamed down from the high table at his assembled knights, Balian knew that Salah-ad-Din’s campfires were visible from the Gaza Gate—as numerous as the night stars.

  Baldwin was radiant. He sat in the central chair, his gloved hands resting on the arms, and he could not wipe the smile off his face. “We made it, Balian,” he insisted triumphantly. “Nobody thought we would. Aimery tried to talk me out of it.”

  “And well he should have, your grace.”

  “We cannot afford to lose Ascalon,” Baldwin countered. “You did not really think I would leave you in the lurch, did you?”

  “Your grace, I did not doubt you would send me aid,” Balian reasoned, “and I’m grateful for every man in the room—save you.”

  “Ha! You mean I should have sent Lusignan at the head of my relief force—or sent my uncle of Edessa and Reginald de Sidon without me?”

  “I do, your grace.” It wasn’t just that Baldwin’s illness rendered him incapable of fighting; it was the fact that the succession was again endangered. The Marquis of Montferrat, who had married Princess Sibylla a year ago, had died of a sudden fever in June. While he lived, Montferrat had ensured that at Baldwin’s death the Kingdom would be left in the hands of a man both battle-hardened and well-connected, but Montferrat’s death meant that—until they found a new husband for Sibylla—the Kingdom would be without a king should Baldwin be killed. It did not help that Sibylla was pregnant, and any new husband would have to recognize another man’s son as his heir.

  “Well, my lord,” the King told Balian pointedly, “you share that opinion with practically everyone else in Jerusalem, including my mother—but I am no longer a child who can be told, ‘No, you cannot do that’ or ‘Don’t touch, that is for adults only.’” Ice had crept into Baldwin’s voice, and although he was smiling, he was no longer jubilant. “I have been told far too long what I cannot do. Now take note of what I can do!”

  Balian bowed his head to his young King in submission, and then poured for him and held the silver goblet to his lips so he could drink, tipping the cup very carefully as his King sipped. When the King pulled back his head, shaking his head to signal he had had enough, their eyes met. “How many knights did you bring, your grace?” Balian asked him in a low voice.

  Baldwin answered proudly: “Three hundred and sixty-seven!”

  Balian’s estimate had not been far off this, but it still amazed him to hear the number confirmed. With Tripoli and Antioch engaged in their own campaign against Hama, Jerusalem could call on no troops from those states and was dependent on its own resources. “What did you do? Call on every knight physically present in the city?”

  “Exactly,” Baldwin agreed. “Sir Walter made it clear that we didn’t have time to muster the feudal levies. The only way I could get here before the Saracen siege army closed around you was to take every mounted knight available in Jerusalem—except Aimery, of course, whom I left in command there. I called up every able-bodied knight in Jerusalem, and they came!” He sounded a little surprised at that, and Balian caught a glimpse of his inner uncertainty—which also explained his elation. Baldwin had issued a command he hadn’t really believed would be followed. It surprised and excited him to find that he did indeed command the forces of the Kingdom, despite his handicap.

  Balian took his own goblet and raised it to his King. “You have the heart of a lion, your grace—and, I hope, Godfrey de Bouillon’s ring to bring us luck.”

  “I’ve done better than that, Balian. Didn’t you recognize Albert, Bishop of Bethlehem, beneath all his armor? He is carrying a piece of the True Cross in a gold reliquary beneath his gambeson.”

  Balian looked over, startled, toward the “knight” Baldwin had indicated. He had not recognized the Bishop of Bethlehem, but now that he looked he realized that the man was indeed tonsured, and like all clerics that took to the battlefield, he carried a mace rather than a sword to avoid “shedding blood.”

  “I am grateful for the Bishop’s aid,” Balian told his King, and he smiled as he spoke—but it did not escape Baldwin that his eyes were still deep wells of worry.

  By midday the city was completely invested by the enemy. They kept out of range of the garrison’s crossbows, but they swarmed through the orchards and trampled the vegetable gardens under. The tents of the emirs billowed up brightly, and the howling of the muezzin provoked the garrison into jeers and shouts, until the church bells took up a wild clanging to drown out the Muslim call to prayers.

  With the King, Edessa, and Reginald de Sidon, the only baron who happened to be in Jerusalem when the King put out his call to arms, Balian walked the walls of the city, taking the measure of the enemy. They counted roughly 120 tents, which put the enemy strength very near the thirty thousand Balian had first estimated. They eventually identified a tent that they thought might belong to the Sultan Salah-ad-Din, but it was quite far back, behind many others, and they could not be completely sure. Nor could they make out any siege engines. Still, the Saracen army was clearly digging in and preparing to besiege Ascalon. They dug ditches to protect their own positions from sorties, and also as latrines, draining into the sea to both the north and south.

  From what the garrison could see, the vast majority of the troops were black, which meant they were Salah-ad-Din’s Egyptian infantry. The ca
valry, in contrast, were Turkomen or Kurds, Edessa confirmed, and included what looked like one thousand Mamlukes in the bright yellow tunics of Salah-ad-Din’s personal bodyguard. The cavalry bivouacked to the north of the city and turned their horses out to pasture on the now-fallow fields along the road to Jaffa.

  At the council of war held that afternoon, there was considerable discussion of a sortie. Having pulled nearly four hundred knights together, it seemed a shame to waste them in a purely defensive battle. Four hundred heavy horse packed an almost invincible punch and would undoubtedly cause havoc in the enemy camp—until they got bogged down and surrounded by the sheer weight of numbers. If Salah-ad-Din’s tent had been closer, it would have been tempting to try to kill or capture the Sultan himself.

  But despite the King’s patent eagerness to show his mettle, he did not let himself get talked into anything foolish. The sortie idea was put on hold until a clear objective—such as siege engines being brought to bear or sappers being deployed—was at hand. So the defenders of Ascalon went to bed that night uneasy, but not unduly alarmed. Father Laurence had assured them they had enough food for six months, and water was plentiful from four deep wells that tapped into the ground water below sea level. Furthermore, it was the start of the rainy season, of which they were reminded by the rain that set in just before dusk.

  The following morning, however, the garrison had the first inkling that something was amiss in the enemy camp. One of the night watchmen complained to Roger Shoreham that the enemy had been “too loud.” Another watchman, in contrast, reported smugly that the muezzin “had learned to pipe down a bit”—and that set off Roger’s alarm bells. He was damned sure the muezzin of a Saracen army would not “quiet down” just because they stood opposite a Christian city, and he started to suspect the enemy had split their forces. The morning rain had closed down visibility, however, and all he could do was squint fractiously into the drenching rain and try to determine if there were as many tents out there as there had been the day before. All he got was soggier and soggier. It was nearly noon before the rain let up enough for him to see what he needed to report to the Constable.