by Jan Guillou
And people of malice now held the power in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which could lead to the greatest defeat. Not a defeat like the recent one at Marj Ayyoun; that was only one of a thousand battles waged over many years, and the Saracens and Christians had each won about an equal number. Raymond himself had been victorious more than a hundred times, but had lost almost as often.
Worst of all the malicious people was the king’s mother, Agnes de Courtenay, who now had insinuated herself into the court in Jerusalem and actually had become the one who had the greatest say in matters. Her various lovers were those who acquired power. They were all newly arrived tenderfeet, and behaved as one did at a royal court in Paris or Rome; they dressed in the courtly manner and divided their time between instigating base intrigues and committing unmentionable sins with small boys from the slave market. Agnes de Courtenay’s latest lover was a fop named Lusignan, and he was scheming to get the king’s sister Sibylla married off to a younger brother named Guy. If that happened, little brother Lusignan could soon become king of Jerusalem. The days of the young but leprous Baldwin IV were numbered.
For Arn these were mostly incomprehensible matters that Count Raymond began complaining about more and more loudly as he drank, and urged Arn to drink more too. It was another world, a world in which God did not exist, where God’s Grave was guarded not by devoted believers but by intriguers and those who consorted with donkeys and slave boys. It was like looking down into Hell, as it was said that the Prophet, peace be unto him, had to do when he climbed up the ladder to Heaven from the rock beneath the Temple of the Lord.
When Count Raymond eventually realized that he was blurting out too many things that the childlike but honest young Templar knight did not understand, he switched to discussing the latest lost battle at Marj Ayyoun.
They soon agreed, now that no one could hear them, that it was not so much their own mistakes as Saladin’s cunning that had turned the tide against them. Either Saladin had had extraordinary good luck, as the Templar knights had experienced at Mont Gisard, or with uncanny skill he had done everything right. He must have planned the whole thing in advance, for when he attacked earlier in the spring he had only had a small army, and now he had come with a force five times as strong. The Christians had not realized this until it was too late. So his victory was fully justified.
Even though the wine had now gone to Arn’s head, he tried to argue against the idea of a justified victory for the enemy, but he could offer no valid objections. On the contrary, after a few more glasses he had to agree with the count’s conclusion; so he changed the subject out of sheer embarrassment. He asked Count Raymond why he hated the Knights Templar.
Count Raymond retreated a bit and told him that there were a few Templar knights, including Arn, or Al Ghouti rather, whom he did admire. Foremost among them was Arnoldo de Torroja, Jerusalem’s Master. If God would ever involve Himself in a good way in the situation in the Holy Land, then Arnoldo de Torroja should be the next Grand Master. By now Odo de Saint Armand was either dead or taken captive, which in the case of Templar knights was usually the same as death. According to Count Raymond, Arnoldo de Torroja was one of the few high Templars who grasped the sole important issue for a Christian future in Outremer. They would have to make peace with Saladin. They had to divide Jerusalem, no matter how painful it might be, so that all pilgrims, even Jews, had equal right to the city’s holy places.
There was only one alternative to that: continued war with Saladin until he gained complete victory and took Jerusalem by force. But as the royal court in Jerusalem now looked, with only schemers and dilettantes, there was not much hope.
Besides, the Knights Templar, whose power had to be acknowledged no matter what one thought of them otherwise, had many exceptionally incompetent and immoral friends. Worst among them was the inveterate rascal Reynald de Châtillon, who had recently insinuated himself into the court by marrying Stéphanie de Milly, the daughter of the Grand Master, and with that he had gained the two fortresses, Kerak and Montreal. This had given him the support of the Knights Templar.
The villains were gathering like hungry vultures around the court in Jerusalem. A scoundrel equally as dangerous as Reynald de Châtillon was one Gérard de Ridefort. Arn would remember that name; he was a friend of the Knights Templar and just as dangerous as the Assassins.
Gérard had arrived as an ordinary adventurer among all the others who came by ship to Tripoli. He had taken service with Count Raymond, and at first all had seemed to go well. In a moment of weakness Count Raymond had promised Gérard the first suitable heiress to be his in marriage, and a certain Lucia had been mentioned. But it so happened that a merchant from Pisa then offered Count Raymond Lucia’s weight in gold if he would be allowed to marry the heiress. And since she was a rather plump young lady, it was impossible for Count Raymond to refuse such an offer. The ungrateful Gérard was furious, claiming that his honor had been sullied, and he refused to wait for the next suitable heiress. Instead he had joined the Knights Templar and sworn to take revenge on Count Raymond.
Arn then cautiously interjected, and this was the first time he had said a word in a while, that this was the most peculiar reason he had ever heard for joining the Templar order.
Count Raymond continued to talk all night until the sun came up and dazzled their eyes. Arn’s head was spinning, as much from the wine as from Count Raymond’s vast knowledge of all the things that were wrong in the Holy Land.
Arn recalled having once drunk too much ale at a banquet when he was very young; the next day he felt ill and had a searing headache. He had managed to forget that feeling, but this morning was a harsh reminder of what it meant to drink too much.
A week later Arn and his sergeant Harald were riding alone along the coast toward Gaza. They had transferred all their wounded from Beaufort to the Templar quarters in Saint-Jean d’Acre, the city that others called Akko or merely Acre. There Arn had ordered larger and safer transport for all the surviving and more or less battered sergeants south to Gaza; he wanted to get his wounded men under Saracen care as soon as possible. He and Harald now rode together, planning to arrive in advance.
They didn’t talk much on the way. They had left Gaza in a large contingent with forty knights and a hundred sergeants. Only two knights and fifty-three sergeants were returning. Among the brothers who were now in Paradise were five of six of the best Templar knights Arn had ever known. Under such circumstances there was neither joy nor relief in having survived, merely a feeling of inconceivable injustice.
Harald Øysteinsson tried on one occasion to jest that as a Birch-Leg he was experienced in defeat, and that this experience had been put to good use in the Holy Land, although the outcome was not at all as he had hoped.
Arn neither smiled nor replied.
They stopped in Ashkelon and took lodging in the Knights Templar quarter, where they separated for the night, since knights and sergeants never slept in the same lodgings, except in the field. Arn nevertheless did not spend the night sleeping, but rather on his knees in the knights’ chapel before the image of the Virgin Mary. He did not ask Her for protection or for his own safety. Instead he asked Her to protect his beloved Cecilia and their child, whether it was a son or a daughter. And he beseeched Her for an answer, for the grace to understand, for the wisdom to distinguish between true and false. For much of what Count Raymond had told him when he was drunk and despairing and angry had stayed in his mind, and he could not free himself of such thoughts.
If it was true that the Virgin Mary gave him an answer the very next day, then Her answer was cruel. Or, as Count Raymond would have said with a thundering laugh, it was a brutally frank answer to come from God’s Mother.
Because when they had not much longer to go to reach Gaza and were approaching the Bedouin camp of the Banu Anaza, they could see from afar that something was terribly wrong.
No warriors came riding out to meet them. Among the black tents lay women, children, and elders with t
heir foreheads pressed to the sand in prayer. Up on a hill by the camp, three worldly Frankish knights were making ready to attack.
Arn spurred Khamsiin to top speed and stormed into the camp with sand flying, leaving Harald far behind. The sound of thundering hooves made the praying Bedouins huddle even closer to the ground in fright, because they did not see who was coming.
Arn walked Khamsiin among the black-clad people, whom he could not identify from his position on horseback. Then they cautiously began to look up. Some of the Bedouin women suddenly raised their long, ululating cry of welcome and they all stood up, praising God that He had sent Al Ghouti at the last moment.
An older woman began waving her hand rhythmically and soon everyone in the camp fell into the song of welcome: Al Ghouti, Al Ghouti, Al Ghouti!
He found the elder of the tribe with the long beard, the man named Ibrahim after the forefather of all peoples, no matter how they prayed to God.
Arn was careful to dismount from Khamsiin before he took the old man’s hands in greeting.
“What has happened, Ibrahim?” he asked. “Where are all of Banu Anaza’s warriors, and what do those franji up on the hill want?”
“God is great who sent you, Al Ghouti, therefore I thank Him more than you,” replied the old man in relief. “Our men are out on a raid in Sinai. There is war there and no truce we need to respect. We have shelter here and needed no defense, or so we thought. But these franji came from the north, from Ashkelon, and they spoke to us and said that we should pray for the last time. They intend to kill us all, if I understood them right.”
“I can’t ask you to forgive them because they know not what they do, but I can certainly drive them away!” replied Arn, bowing to Ibrahim. Then he jumped up on Khamsiin and rode at a good clip toward the three Franks up on the hill.
As he came nearer he slowed down to study them. They were undoubtedly newly arrived tenderfeet, all three; they had a great deal of color and ornamentation on their mantles, and they wore the newest type of helmet that encased the whole head and scarcely left a small cross-shaped slit for the eyes. Reluctantly they now took off their helmets and did not seem glad to see a Christian.
“Who are you three, where do you come from, and what is this supposed to mean?” Arn shouted in his practiced tone of command.
“Who are you, Christian, who dresses like a Saracen?” asked the Frank in the middle. “You’re interrupting our holy mission, so we must ask you kindly to step aside before we turn unfriendly.”
Arn did not reply for a moment, since he was praying silently for the lives of the three fools. Then he swept aside his mantle so that his surcoat with the red cross was visible.
“I am a Templar knight,” he said in a restrained manner. “I am Arn de Gothia and I am the master of Gaza. You three are now in Gaza’s territory. What you see down there are Bedouins who belong to Gaza, our property. Fortunately for you, all the warriors in camp are out on business or at work for me, otherwise you would be dead. Now I repeat my question: who are you three Christians and where do you come from?”
They said that they came from Provence, that they had come with their count to Ashkelon along with many others, that they were out on their first day of patrol in the Holy Land, and that they had been fortunate to find Saracens whom they intended to send immediately to Hell. They had namely taken the cross, all three, and therefore it was their duty according to God.
“According to the Holy Father in Rome, in any case,” Arn corrected them sarcastically. “But we Templar knights are the Holy Father’s army; we obey only him. So the closest you are now to your pope is the commander of Gaza, and I am that man. Enough of this. I bid you welcome to the Holy Land, may God stand by you. But now I order you to return to Ashkelon without delay, or wherever you may wish to go. But you must leave Gaza’s territory, where you now find yourselves.”
The three knights showed absolutely no sign of obeying. They insisted that they had a holy duty to kill Saracens, that they had taken the cross, that they were intending to begin their holy mission right here and now, and other such nonsense. They clearly had no idea what a Templar knight was, and they didn’t seem to realize that the black border along the mail protecting Khamsiin’s hindquarters meant that they were talking to a high brother. They were like madmen.
Arn tried to explain that they could not carry out this imagined holy mission to kill women, children, and old people, since there was a Templar knight in their way. They had to accept that they were at a serious disadvantage.
This they did not understand at all; on the contrary, they thought that they were three against one and that it might be enjoyable to fight off a Saracen-lover before they completed their blessed mission to slaughter the village.
Arn patiently begged them to reconsider. Since they were only three, it would be foolish to attack a Templar knight. If they returned to Ashkelon and asked those who had been in the Holy Land longer, they would surely be told the same.
But they wouldn’t listen to reason. Arn gave up and rode rapidly down the hill to position Khamsiin directly in front of the camp. There he demonstratively drew his sword, raised it to the sun three times, lowered it and kissed it, and then began his obligatory prayers.
Old Ibrahim laboriously trudged through the sand to reach him from one direction while Harald came on horseback from another. Arn explained first in Arabic and then in Norse what in the worst case might happen if the three crazy men up on the hill refused to be sensible. Ibrahim hurried off at once, while Harald stationed his horse next to Arn’s and cockily drew his sword.
“You have to move back, you’ll just be in the way,” said Arn in a low voice without looking at Harald.
“Never shall I abandon a kinsman who finds himself at a disadvantage. You can’t make me do so, jarl that you are!” Harald protested vehemently.
“You will be killed at once and I don’t want that to happen,” said Arn without taking his eyes off the three Frankish knights. They had now knelt down to pray before their attack; the fools were apparently serious. But Harald didn’t make the slightest attempt to move away.
“I’m telling you once and for all that you must obey my order,” said Arn in a louder voice. “They’re going to attack with lances, and you’ll be killed at once if you’re nearby. You must move your horse away now. If there is a fight on foot, then you may assist me. If you can find a bow and arrows in any of the tents, use them. But you may not ride against Franks!”
“But you don’t have a lance!” Harald objected in despair.
“No, but I have Khamsiin, and I can fight like the Saracens, which these three have probably never encountered. So go now and at least look for a bow and arrows so that you can be of some use!”
Arn had given this last order in a very stern tone. Harald obeyed and trotted toward the tents just as old Ibrahim came back, out of breath and stumbling in the sand, holding a bundle in his hands. When he reached Arn he had to catch his breath for a moment. The three Franks up on the hill were now putting on their helmets with plumes in beautiful colors.
“God is truly great,” the old man puffed as he began to unwrap his bundle. “But His ways are inscrutable to men. From time immemorial we of the Banu Anaza have taken care of this sword. It was the sword that the holy Ali ibn Abi Talib lost when he was martyred outside Kufa. It has been our duty to pass this sword down from father to son until our saviour came, he who would save the faithful. It is you who are that man, Al Ghouti! The one who fights with a soul so pure and for a cause so holy as you now intend to do can never lose with this sword in hand. It was written that you should have it!”
Beseeching him and with trembling hands the old man held out an ancient and clearly dull sword toward Arn. Despite the gravity of the moment, he couldn’t help but laugh.
“I doubt that I am the right man, my dear friend Ibrahim,” he said. “And believe me, my sword is just as holy as yours. It is also, if you’ll pardon me saying so, somewhat sharper.”
The old man would not yield; he continued to offer the sword, trembling all the more with the effort.
Then a shadow slipped into Arn’s thoughts. The Rule forbade any Templar knight from killing or even wounding a Christian. His own sword was blessed before God in the church at Varnhem; it could never be raised in sin for then he, as he himself had sworn, would be smitten to the ground.
He reached down his shield arm and grabbed the old sword, weighed it tentatively in his hand, and ran his finger along its blunt edge. The three Franks now lowered their lances and began galloping in tight formation toward Arn. He had to decide at once.
“Look here, Ibrahim!” he said, handing him his own sword. “Stick this sword in the sand before your tent, and pray before the cross you see there. I shall use your sword and we shall see how great God is!”
In the next instant he spurred Khamsiin, who had already begun to quiver with eagerness, and dashed straight ahead toward the lances of the three Franks. Ibrahim ran back to his tent, stumbling in the sand, to do with Arn’s sword as he had been asked.
Harald had not found any bow, no matter how much he searched, and now he stood as if paralyzed, watching what was happening. His jarl was dashing with sword in hand straight for three attacking knights with lances lowered.
In the following moments he came to fully appreciate his jarl’s words, which he had thought contemptuous, when Arn said that no Norwegian was any good on a horse.
Anyone at all, even Harald, could now see that Arn Magnusson’s horse was much faster than those of the others. Up to the last second it looked as though Arn was really intending to fall like a fool with his head down into the three lances rushing toward him. But just beyond their reach he turned sharply to the right so that Khamsiin bolted almost horizontally in the turn and the three knights missed. When they pulled up and looked around as best they could through the narrow slits in their helmets, Arn had already circled and struck the first man with a blow across the neck. The Frankish knight collapsed at once, dropped his lance and shield and fell slowly, sliding lifelessly off his horse. By then the second knight had Arn upon him. He tried to defend himself with his shield as the third knight, who now had his comrade in the way, had to maneuver around to take a new angle of attack.