“Any other questions?” Balian pressed his prisoner, anxious to get away from this stinking cell and the nagging of his conscience.
“If that is to be my fate,” Rashid answered bravely, “then let it be today rather than tomorrow. I cannot bear the darkness or the filth any longer.”
Balian cursed inwardly, because he could feel himself being moved by Rashid’s appeal. Rashid had always been the most reasonable of the prisoners.
“I cannot sell you until I am sure there will be no ransom,” Balian explained, “because no slave trader will pay what I want in ransom.”
“But my father cannot pay—not even if he asks all his brothers and brothers-in-law to help. My whole clan cannot pay ten thousand bezants.”
“I believe you,” Balian admitted, “but it is of no account, because I have asked Salah-ad-Din to pay your ransom.”
This time there was no question that Rashid gasped. “The Sultan? But . . .” He fell into a stunned silence.
Balian shrugged. “Why shouldn’t he pay your ransom? I described myself and my stallion to him. I pointed out that if you had not stopped me, I would have taken him captive. His ransom would have been a great deal more than ten thousand bezants—or thirty thousand, for that matter. I asked him if he was so ungrateful as to let a man who had saved him from captivity end in slavery.”
Rashid shook his head in disbelief and confusion. He appeared torn between shock at Balian’s audacity—and hope that maybe he might be ransomed after all.
“Now,” Balian continued, “in your shoes—” he glanced at Rashid’s bare feet and with a smile revised his phraseology—“in your place, I would pray for the lady you and your colleagues so shamelessly insulted. Your fate lies in her hands. If she is safely delivered of the child she is now struggling to bring into the world, then I may, out of joy, order my men to improve the conditions of your confinement. But if she dies, then I will be cast into deep grief, and I will begrudge you every drop of sunlight and every sip of water, because you sullied the last month of her life with your aspersions on her virtue.”
They stared at one another. Then Rashid bowed his head. “I will pray for your lady, my lord.”
“Good.” Balian turned his back and ducked through the door of the wooden shed. Roger locked the door behind him and followed him back up to the first floor and out onto the landing.
“Any new instructions, my lord?” Because the conversation with Rashid had been in Arabic, Roger hadn’t a clue about what had passed between them.
Balian smiled wanly. “Think me a fool, Master Shoreham, but I promised the two in the wooden cells a return to daylight and cleanliness if the Lady of Ibelin survives her ordeal.” He nodded to the tower, from which at the moment only a low murmur of female voices could be heard.
Shoreham nodded. “As you think best, my lord, although . . .”
“Go on, spit it out,” Balian urged.
“Well, my lord, I hear Salah-ad-Din is a ruthless man and a religious fanatic. He will see kindness as a weakness, since he will never understand what we mean by honor.”
“That is why Ishmael will remain where he is,” Balian answered, “so that Salah-ad-Din knows that I, too, can be uncompromising and ruthless when I choose to be, but if I choose not to, then—”
A wrenching, high-pitched scream split the early afternoon air, making Balian blanch. This wasn’t a conscious scream. It was the kind of scream that was wrung from a person so racked with sharp and sudden pain that they had no will anymore. Balian had heard screams like this on the battlefield, but not from a woman—not from someone he loved.
“How much longer, did you say?” he asked Shoreham.
“Hours, my lord. If you want to ride out for a bit, I’m sure you won’t miss anything.”
“No.” Balian couldn’t do that. Instead he pounded down the stairs of the keep and entered the crypt under the first-floor chapel in the exterior wall.
The crypt was dark and cool. Balian fell onto his knees beside his brother’s tomb. The effigy had been completed only two years ago and was still fresh and white, almost raw. The sculptor, a local artist who had done much of the work on the façade of St. George’s, might not have the skill of the Byzantine sculptors King Amalric had invited in to renovate the Church of the Nativity, but he had known Hugh. Balian saw his brother’s features in the knight lying on the top of the tomb, his legs crossed at the ankle and his hands clasping the hilt of his sword. His surcoat opened up the front to reveal his mailed legs and the garters holding up his chausses. The crosses of Ibelin dusted the stone surcoat in relief.
Balian found it intimidating to pray for the birth of a son before his brother, who had not been blessed with any live children. He bent his head and prayed instead for the repose of Hugh’s soul.
His prayers were disturbed, however, by whispers coming from the chapel overhead. Irritated, Balian lifted his head to listen more closely. Stone ducts had been built to lead from behind the altar of the chapel down into the crypt so that the dead, too, would have the benefit of hearing Mass. As children, Balian and his brothers had played games seeing how softly they could speak into one of the ducts upstairs and still be understood in the crypt below. One of them would whisper something, the second would say what he heard, and the third was the judge of whether he was right or wrong.
Frowning, Balian moved toward the altar of the crypt, his head raised toward the outlet of the nearest duct.
“… She never screamed like that when I was born!” Isabella insisted in her stubborn, childish voice.
“She did, too!” Eschiva shot back. “All women do! Beth says her father’s second and third wives both died in childbirth. Both of them! And the child still in them!” Eschiva sounded almost delighted to have such gruesome tales with which to frighten Isabella.
Balian was simply appalled that he had forgotten all about the children. With Rahel and Mistress Shoreham and the other women attending Maria Zoë, the little girls had been left on their own. The measure of their fear could be judged by the very fact that they were in the chapel.
Balian left the crypt at once, and with only a single despairing glance in the direction of the “torture chamber” (as he thought of the birthing room), he climbed to the first floor and entered the chapel. He found Beth kneeling in front of the beautiful icon to the Mother of God that Maria Zoë had brought with her and had hung in a side niche. Beth was gazing up at the icon with an intense expression that bespoke doubt and fear. Eschiva and Isabella had long since lost interest in prayer, but lacking any better place to go or unwilling to abandon Beth, they were standing in the choir. Isabella was kicking one of the wooden stalls, while Eschiva slouched on the wooden rest.
At the sight of Balian, Eschiva straightened up guiltily, and Isabella looked over her shoulder to see what had made her cousin react. She looked at Balian with big golden eyes and asked simply, “When is it going to be over?”
Balian swept her up onto the crook of his arm with an honest, “I don’t know, but I think it’s time we all went down to check up on Gladiator, don’t you?”
“Gladiator? But Tante Marie—” Eschiva protested.
“We can’t help Tante Marie,” Balian interrupted her, holding out his free hand. Eschiva took it obediently, and Balian started back out of the chapel. He paused behind Beth, but she pretended not to notice him. He knew she was still very reluctant to be in his—or any male—company, and supposed she was best off where she was.
Balian found both his squires down in the stables. Although he gave them a reproving look, he could hardly blame them for doing what he had wanted to do: get as far away from the screams as possible. At the sight of Balian with the girls, the squires hastily came over to be of assistance, asking whether Balian wanted the girls’ ponies tacked up. Isabella said yes immediately, but Eschiva said no, and Balian decided on the middle ground. “Tack up Isabella’s pony and I’ll give her a lesson.” Then, of course, Eschiva wanted a lesson, too, so the ponies we
re quickly brushed down and tacked up.
While the squires were seeing to the ponies, Mathewos came over to stand beside Balian. He didn’t say anything, just stood with him, and Balian felt his sympathy; Mathewos’s wife had died giving him his youngest son. Balian found himself wondering why the groom had never remarried, and then felt guilty for the thought. It was as if he were imagining Maria Zoë already dead.
“I may have found a replacement for Gladiator,” the groom spoke at last, as if to distract him.
“Really?” Although Balian had been worrying about this ever since it became clear that Gladiator was unlikely to heal enough to carry him in battle again, at the moment Balian wasn’t really interested in the topic.
“Yes. He’s no longer a colt. He’s seven already, and he’s been ill used, I suspect, although I don’t know if it was the horse dealer or the previous owner.”
“Ill used?” Balian tried to concentrate. “But not ruined?”
Mathewos scratched his head thoughtfully. “I think if he is well treated and comes to trust you, he will be very grateful and loyal, but we won’t know unless we try. He is very cheap.”
Balian looked sideways at Mathewos. Cheap had never been a criterion for buying a horse—even when he was a landless knight.
“He is so cheap that other buyers underestimate his value.”
“Go ahead, buy him,” Balian agreed. “We have little to lose until we find something better.”
Then with a sigh, he led his stepdaughter and niece over the drawbridge and out to the tiltyard beyond the castle walls on the edge of the dunes. Here he tried to concentrate on teaching them the elements of riding, while his nerves remained on edge and his thoughts were with his wife.
“It’s a lovely little girl,” Mistress Shoreham declared with a wide smile as she took the infant from the midwife.
“Girl?” Maria Zoë gasped out in horrified disbelief. She had been so certain that this time she wouldn’t fail; not for Balian.
The other women closed around her, helping her up off the stool and carrying, as much as leading, her to the bed. Rahel wiped the blood and other fluids off her belly and thighs with a linen cloth drenched in warm water. The midwife was busily dealing with the umbilical cord and afterbirth, and one of the younger laundresses daubed the sweat from Maria Zoë’s face.
“Girl?” Maria Zoë asked again, twisting to get a look at the baby in Mistress Shoreham’s ample arms, while the others tucked her in under the clean sheets, ready to receive her lord.
“A pretty little girl, just like her mama!” Mistress Shoreham agreed, wiping the red face of the infant clean with a small square of damp cotton.
“My God, no!” Maria Zoë sobbed as she curled into a ball, hiding beneath the covers in shame. It had been the birth of Isabella that had ruined her first marriage, but she hadn’t cared about that so much—not like she cared about Balian. She had feared for her status, for her position at court, for her reputation—but this was different. Now she feared the loss of everything that mattered to her. What was the use of gold, jewels, or silk? What were Nablus and all her dower wealth, if she did not retain the affection of the man she loved?
Why couldn’t it have been a boy? she asked wordlessly, sobbing miserably. Was God so angry just because she and Balian had known each other carnally before being married? But she had been a virgin bride for Amalric, and still He had sent a girl. Did He hate her? And even if He hated her, what had Balian ever done to deserve this? She could hardly catch any air, buried as she was in the thick comforters, and she gasped for breath, writhing in inner agony. She was so lost in her own misery that she did not hear the voices at the door, nor realize that Balian had arrived, until he reached out his hand.
“Shhh!” he urged her, his hand warm and dry on her ankle—the only part of her not covered by the sheets.
“Balian!” she gasped, but did not dare emerge from under the covers to meet his reproachful eyes. She closed hers more tightly still and tried to hide her head under her arms.
“Zoë.” His warm, deep voice penetrated her sobs. “What’s the matter?” he asked gently.
“It’s a girl! Didn’t they tell you? It’s only a girl!”
“But she’s healthy,” Balian countered. “And the women tell me she looks like me—though I’m not sure that’s a compliment, given the way she looks.” He laughed, and the women laughed with him.
“Balian?” Maria Zoë tried to stop her sobs as she lifted the covers just enough to let in some air through a tunnel of linen. “You’re sure you aren’t angry?”
“Why should I be angry?” he asked back. “God made both men and women that they might draw comfort from one another, and He made this child of ours a girl. Should I question His wisdom in giving me a daughter? Or even if I did, why should I be angry with you?”
Maria Zoë at last ventured a peek over the edge of the covers. Balian was sitting on the side of the bed looking at her; he smiled when he saw her eyes emerge above the sheets.
Maria Zoë still couldn’t believe it, but she unfolded enough to pull herself onto the pillows and sit up a little, hiccupping. “Truly? You aren’t angry?”
“Zoë, as long as you are well, I am content.”
Maria Zoë hiccupped and stared at him.
“Don’t you want to see her?” Balian turned to the wet nurse, who placed Balian’s daughter in his arms, and he then held her out to his wife. The baby was red and wrinkled with a caved-in face, a wet mouth, and a shock of wet black hair. She screamed at being taken from the wet nurse’s breast, and her cry was loud and shrill.
Maria Zoë looked down at her daughter in confusion, protectiveness warring with disappointment, but she didn’t take the child from Balian.
“Shall we call her after her mother?” Balian asked.
“Good heavens, no!” Maria Zoë answered. “There are far too many Marias in the world already.”
“What about your mother, then?” Balian asked, realizing to his shame that he did not even know his mother-in-law’s name.
“Another Maria!” she protested. “What about your mother?”
“Helvis?” Balian asked skeptically, thinking Zoë wouldn’t be such a bad name.
“Yes!” Maria Zoë agreed, ending the discussion and taking the baby from him at last, her eyes now glued to her little daughter. “Helvis is a lovely name for her.”
Balian wanted to protest, but the look on Zoë’s face had been transformed into one of such contentment that he didn’t have the heart to shatter the scene. At that moment, he beheld the most beautiful mother-and-child image he had ever seen.
Shoreham didn’t like the look of the party of Muslim cavalry demanding admittance, but they came under a flag of truce—and Mathewos, who came out to translate, said they had come about the ransoms. Shoreham grumbled and gave orders to keep a good watch on them, for they had both large, curved sabers and straight swords, and they wore chain mail under their silken tunics. Their turbans were of yellow silk, and Mathewos whispered that they were from Salah-ad-Din’s own Mamluke guard—provoking another growl from Shoreham.
When Daniel came down to tell his father that Lord Balian would see the envoy, Shoreham pulled him aside and warned him, “Keep on your guard, Daniel. They’re as likely to try to kill Lord Balian as negotiate with him.”
Daniel nodded, his hand moving automatically to grip the hilt of his sword before he gestured for the Saracen spokesman to follow him. He led the Saracen across the ward to mount the exterior steps leading to the Great Chamber, where Balian had agreed to meet him. The whole time, Daniel was conscious of just how vulnerable the spot between his shoulder blades was. He wasn’t wearing armor when performing household duties like this; Balian only let him put on armor for weapons practice in the morning or when they rode out on patrols. Daniel was so conscious of his own vulnerability that he didn’t give a thought to what it must be like for the Saracen, alone in the heart of an enemy fortress.
The Great Chamber on t
he first floor of the keep was used as a courtroom, and Balian sat in the tall armed chair behind the table as he would on a day when he was hearing petitions, settling disputes, or sitting in judgment on accused criminals. He was dressed, Daniel noted with relief, in a hauberk under a surcoat, although he had not bothered with mail chausses and wore soft leather boots instead. The surcoat was silk, parti-colored with the crosses of Ibelin red-on-yellow on one half of it and yellow-on-red on the other, and each cross was outlined in gold stitching; it was one of his best, Daniel noted with approval. Balian wore no head covering, leaving his silky black hair long and free, but he was wearing a large carnelian signet ring that Daniel could not remember him wearing before. He looked, to Daniel’s admiring eyes, very impressive.
The Mamluke negotiator bowed ceremonially before the Christian lord, and opened with a flood of Arabic that, of course, Daniel could no more understand than Balian’s lengthy answer. What he did understand was that Balian gestured for the visitor to take a seat at the end of the table—a place of honor, though not of equality—and he sent Daniel to get refreshment. “Sherbet, not wine. Our visitor abstains from alcohol.”
“Ah, but, my lord,” Daniel started to protest, remembering his father’s warning, but Balian gave him such a reproachful look at his impertinence that he had no choice but to bob his head and back out. No sooner was he out the door, however, than he gestured furiously to some of Balian’s household knights who were standing around curiously. “I have to go for refreshments,” he told them, “but keep an ear on what’s going on in there!”
The knights looked at one another, more amused than affronted by Daniel’s impertinence. Then one of them nodded and came up the stairs to stand within easy call, while Daniel continued toward the kitchens.
Inside the Great Chamber, Balian and the messenger had finished with the opening pleasantries. The messenger had established that he was indeed sent by the Sultan himself and had come to discuss the release of Balian’s prisoners—all three of them, he stressed. He was authorized to make such payments as they agreed to, but he insisted he would not begin the negotiations until he had himself seen and spoken with the prisoners and assured himself of their wellbeing. “The last envoy suggested that you were angry and intended to punish the captives,” he noted with a cold smile.
Knight of Jerusalem Page 31