Jerusalem

by Cecelia Holland

  Sometimes his mind stuck, clogged on one word, one thought. Then dreams swam up from the depths of him, memories, old fears and yearnings, and he wondered how long he could go on keeping track of what was real.

  The ordinary voices of the men, saying their prayers.

  He was tired, and near the end, now.

  “Someone bring me drink.” He could still make noise.

  Felx came; he knew even before the voice sounded, he knew them all by touch. The Dutcher’s slow and careful hands sat him up and fed him watered wine. Felx always watered the wine.

  “What are you doing now?” In among the aimless tweaks in his hearing there was a real sound, somewhere between grinding and bells, a chiming of metal.

  “Mouse is cutting Saint’s hair,” Felx said.

  A scissors. His imagination assembled it for him, all out of that one noise: Rannulf on a stool, his head bent, submissive for once, the redheaded knight behind him with the twinned knives in his hand. The bits of black hair falling.

  “Will you cut my hair?”

  They washed his hair, using some potion against lice that Bear had gotten in the Under City, and combed it and cut it. He slept; when he woke they dressed him, sat him up in crowds of pillows, brought him food he did not eat. Eating seemed extraneous now, when he was so close to dying.

  He knew how close he was, he could feel his mind giving way. It could be worse, he thought; he could be so dazed and useless, and not die. He forgot things, important things, which bothered him.

  “Did my sister have her baby?”

  “Back at Candlemas, Sire.”

  “Oh. Convenient.” He struggled with a fog in the middle of his mind. “Why does she not come to see me?”

  No answer. He knew the answer, anyway. He lay still, feigning sleep. He was asleep more and more now.

  Often the chamberlain came to the door, trying to gain audience for this one, and that one; Rannulf told him to send them all away.

  This time he brought a message, a piece of paper.

  “What’s that?”

  “Abu Hamid’s mark. I have to answer this. Mouse, you come with me.”

  “Where are you going?” Baudouin asked, but no one heard him. Or perhaps he had only said it in his mind.

  Maybe it all happened only in his mind. Maybe he was already dead, and this was hell.

  The summer heat beat down on the suk, and the air rippled above the buildings. On the flat roofs the grass that had grown green there during the spring rains was withered to white straw. Rannulf left his horse with Stephen, and went down between two shops to the back door into the house of Abu Hamid, who had summoned him.

  This door opened into a shadowy room with white plastered walls, cooler than the outdoors. Rannulf went in, expecting to find the merchant or one of his friends, and stopped short, his jaw dropping open. At the far end of the room, the Princess Sibylla turned and faced him.

  For a moment he could not take his eyes from her. He had not seen her since before she married. She stared calmly back at him through the shadows of the room until he mastered himself and lowered his eyes.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “I would not have, had I known it was you,” he said, staring at the floor.

  “I am aware of that.” She was moving up the room toward him. “But I have come to plead with you, Rannulf, to beg you to take me to my brother.”

  The softness of her footstep was a thunder on his nerves. He shook his head. “There is nothing you can do. He has bound the succession in iron bands, with safeguards all around, you cannot break it.”

  “Ah,” she said. “What you think of me! I don’t care about the succession, Saint. He’s dying. I have to see him before he dies. Please. I shall go to my knees before you.” He heard the susurrus of her skirts; he shut his eyes, unwilling to see her humble herself. She said, “I beg you. Take me to him.”

  He crossed himself; what decided him was not her desire, but that he knew the King’s. He said, “I will take you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Let me fetch my cloak.”

  The room was dark, and stank of steeped herbs and human slops. Sibylla said, on the threshold, “Bati?” She was already weeping. She had promised herself she would be serene, she would show no frailty, but the tears flooded down her cheeks. “Bati?” She crossed the room to the raised bed; she forgot about the Templars behind her, she saw only the carcass of her brother lying on the bed.

  He was dead. She was too late. She laid her head down on his chest and sobbed.

  The Templars left them alone. Under her head his chest heaved. From his wrecked flesh his voice rose as if from the bottom of a well. “Bili?” His head turned, his arms twitched, trying to reach for her. “Bili,” he whispered. “You came. You did come after all.” She gathered him into her arms, laughing with relief, and sprinkled him with her tears.

  Toward evening, two of the Templars came back into the room: Rannulf, and the handsome redheaded knight inexplicably called Mouse. Her brother was asleep. Sibylla drew back, turning her gaze on the two men.

  “I want to stay until the end,” she said. “But no one else must know that I am here.”

  Rannulf went to the King’s bedside. The knight Mouse said, “You have no women with you, Princess, it’s not seemly.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I want to stay.”

  “She can stay,” Rannulf said. He lit the lamp on the King’s bedstead. “Mouse, go fetch her something to eat. Call Felx and Bear and put them on guard at the door.”

  The redheaded knight went out again. Sibylla crossed the room to the window; she could hear doves calling, in the stonework just outside. The sun was going down, the sky like bloody rags. Below, in the courtyard, a sentry called out and another answered, passing the word. The sill of the window was still warm under her hand.

  Coming here had cost her something. Her husband considered his feud with the King to be the measure of his own greatness. If he found out she was not in Beersheba, with Alys and the baby, where she had made as if to go, there would be trouble. She had lied to him to get around the trouble.

  He would never find out. She was good at lying.

  The cost was worth it. She went to her brother again.

  He lay in the rucked covers, his breathing loud and harsh. His hair was cut short, like a Templar’s. His face was unrecognizable beneath the crusty, swollen sores. The bedclothes stank of sweat. She said, “Does he always sound like that?” Gathering the embroidered coverlets in her hands she tried to straighten them. “Help me,” she said. “Lift him.”

  The knight came obediently up beside her, and cradled the King in his arms and held him while she smoothed the bed. He said, “He sounds worse and worse.”

  She said, “Once, he was the most beautiful boy. They all said I should have been the boy, and he the girl, he was so much more beautiful than I. His hair was down to his shoulders, long yellow curls, and he had eyes like my father’s. My father could look at you like pins going through you.”

  “I remember him,” the knight said.

  She laid the pillows down. “Here, put him to rest.” Standing back, she watched her brother stretched on the bed. Leaning forward, she reached out to draw the cover up. The knight had begun to do that, and their hands touched.

  At the touch he recoiled; he jerked his hand back as if she burned him. She wheeled around, angry. “Am I so hateful to you?”

  “No, Princess,” he said. He was staring at the floor again, as he always did.

  “Ah,” she said. “I cannot understand you.”

  She turned back to her brother, tucking the cover around him. Behind her the knight was silent. Yet his silence and his downcast look no longer shut her out. Somehow, in touching him, she had pierced the magic armor of his vow.

  Mouse returned, with servants bringing bread and cheese and wine; he had brought two women, too, but Rannulf sent them away immediately. The knights who had been outside standing guard cam
e in, a big bald man with a blonde beard, and a bigger dark-haired man, and they all ate together, Sibylla among them, like peasants, sitting on the floor. Mouse, who had a pretty, courtly way about him, broke her bread for her and filled her cup. After, the four men knelt down and said their prayers.

  Sibylla went to the bed and stood looking down at her brother. She thought of times in their youth, of hunting with their father in the wilderness and going to Mass on Christmas. He slept, his mouth open and the breath sawing in and out of his throat. She stroked her hand over his cropped hair, but he did not awaken. She wondered if he had received the Sacrament. Tears began to slip down her face. She had always loved him; as children they had been allies against their mother, their nurses, the regent Tripoli, the countless meaching sycophantic schemers and bribers around them. She thought bitterly she would give up her prospects for the crown, give up her husband, give up everything, to have her brother back again.

  She thought of her new daughter, in Beersheba, providing her excuse. She would not give up her daughter.

  Rannulf and Mouse went out. The other two knights lay down on their cots, on the far side of the room, and slept. They had brought in a cot for her also and put it at the foot of the bed, but she did not lie down on it. She felt alone now, and easier. It felt good to be by herself, and not to have to worry about how everything she did would seem to Guy. She went about the room picking up some of the mess. The night had at last subdued the baking summer heat. Through the window the air rushed in a cool torrent. She leaned on the sill, pushing her face into the breath of the night, and looked out over Jerusalem. After living a while in breezy, orange-scented Jaffa she found this city strange and harsh.

  Something in it summoned her, some call to be greater.

  “Bili.”

  She wheeled. Her brother had wakened, his head turned on the pillows, and she went to his side. “Here I am.” She put her hand on his hand.

  His fingers moved feebly against hers. “I thought I dreamed it.” The words crept from him, slurred, run together. “Where is your baby?”

  “She’s with Alys, she’s safe and well. She’s so pretty, Bati, she is as pretty as a new rose. I wish you could see her. We’ve named her Alice, for his mother, but we all call her Jolie.”

  “You love her, then,” he said.

  “Yes. More than anything.”

  “Good.” He was running out of strength. “I’m...” His mouth moved but nothing came out. His head rolled on the pillow.

  “Bati. What do you want?”

  His lips moved. She went across the room to the door and opened it. “Please, help me,” she said into the dark outside, and the door pushed wide and Rannulf came in.

  He went straight to the bed and leaned over the King; she stood by the foot of the bed, watching. There was a cup on the table, and the Templar lifted the King up in the circle of his arm and gave him to drink. She saw that he did not drink.

  She said, “Has he received the Sacrament?”

  The knight nodded. Laying her brother down again, he said, low, “God gives you this.” He went back to the door and pulled in the latch, then returned to the bed and stood at the head of it, his hands on the hilt of his sword. Sibylla sat down by the bed to wait.

  Rannulf fell asleep on his feet; deep in the night, the bell for vigils woke him. The room was quiet. Three candles burned steadily on the chest by the bed. The King lay on his back, his breathing ragged. His sister slept also; sitting on the stool, she had laid her head down on the bed by the King’s feet, and fallen asleep that way.

  Rannulf opened the door onto the stairway, and looked out. Stephen and Felx were there, under the torch on the landing, saying the vigils office. He left the door slightly open, and went back to the bed.

  He stood looking down at the Princess; it seemed less of a sin to look at her as she slept. She had taken off her headdress, and her hair lay in heavy coils around her. Her cheek was ruddy, her mouth half open. Twice he reached out to touch her, to waken her; each time he drew his hand back. Finally he stooped and lifted her up in his arms, her legs draped in her long skirts, and her head against his shoulder.

  For a moment he held her, looking into her face, her eyelid delicate as a shell and her mouth reckless. If he could have held her like that forever he would never have moved again. She stirred, her head turning, and he laid her down on the cot.

  He went to the head of the King’s bed, crossed himself, and said the vigils office. The door opened, and Stephen came in. Rannulf went to the empty cot under the window and lay down on it, but for a long while he could not sleep, and his arms where he had touched her seemed scalded to the bone.

  Late in the afternoon, the King died. They summoned the priests, and servants, and various lords; it did not matter now, they let anyone into the room who cared to enter. The four Templars themselves left, even before the body did.

  Sibylla said, “I have to go back to Jaffa, and I want no one to know I was ever in Jerusalem.”

  Rannulf said, “How did you get here? Through Abu Hamid?”

  She nodded. “He can arrange my return.”

  “Mouse and I will take you down to the Under City.”

  So, in the evening, wrapped and hooded in a cloak, and with a Templar riding on either stirrup, she took the road down into the Under City.

  She was exhausted. She could not think of her brother; that he was dead had no meaning for her yet, nothing seemed to have changed.

  She had to think about what would happen next. About how she would save the Kingdom.

  From the first she had seen the futility in her brother’s elaborate schemes to keep her from the throne. The new King would be the son of her first marriage, who was only six, and frail. The Regency was given to a council, and she knew this kingdom: no such council as her brother had contrived would ever rule here. In their quarrels and rivalries she could maneuver to get what she wanted. Many on the Council were her enemies, but she had her friends there also: her uncle Joscelin and de Ridford, who would see to her interests.

  Bracketed between the Templars, she was coming down into the suk. The goatpens were empty, the produce market closed. The merchants were taking in their stalls, unhooking awnings from poles, and gathering up the goods unsold during the day. By the fountain the women of the Under City had gathered with their jugs. Abu Hamid’s servants were rolling up the carpets that had covered the ground in front of his house, showing off some jugs of brass which now tumbled carelessly into a basket.

  She glanced at the knight on her left hand, considering how to draw him tighter to her.

  She said, “Saint, when you were in Damascus, how could the Sultan have been persuaded to give us a true peace?”

  Rannulf said, “There can be no peace between him and me. I have what he wants.”

  This was of no use to her, and its clarity was dangerous. Her hand tightened on the reins. Her voice harshened. “You make it seem so simple.”

  “It is simple,” he said. “Not easy.”

  “God’s grace,” she said, angry. “What a saint. And the blood all over you.”

  “Even Jesus had to die,” he said. He made the sign of the Cross over the cross on his chest. The Templars drew rein at the front gate of the merchant’s house. Sibylla spoke to the knight beside her.

  “You blaspheme, Saint. Jesus died to save us; not to glorify death, but to defeat it. We cannot go on fighting with the Saracens, we must find some way to live with them.”

  Rannulf turned toward her; he looked full at her, his eyes black as hellfire and no shame in them, no humility, only a hateful, saintly arrogance. “This may be your Kingdom, Princess,” he said. “But it’s my war. Mouse, take her.”

  Now he averted his gaze, cutting her off. She said quietly, so that only he could hear her, “You devil. Damn you, you are the angel of death.” The red knight dismounted and came around to lift her down from her horse. Still simmering with her balked temper, she went on ahead of him through the gate, and he sp
oke to the porter, who ran off for his master. She turned to Mouse.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I shall not forget how well you have helped me.”

  “Princess,” he said. “I loved the King.”

  Startled at the feeling in his voice, she put out her hands to him, and then remembered and drew back. “I know, Mouse.”

  “He needed you, and you came,” he said. “If you ever need me, Princess, call me.” He bowed his head to her, and he went out the gate again.

  She stood looking after him, her mind brought unprepared back to her brother, and for the first time, a pang of unbearable grief pierced her heart. Outside, beyond the walls, a wail of voices went up.

  “The King! The King!” The news had reached the suk.

  She stiffened, helpless, laid open utterly to this. Abu Hamid hastened toward her, his face contorted. “My lady! My lady, is it true?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice shaking. “The King is dead. Our good King Baudouin is dead.” Up in the Holy City, the bells began to toll. She buried her face in her hands, and cried.

  Rannulf did not go to the palace, but went back to the Temple, to the church of the Rock, and knelt down before the altar and tried to pray.

  The church was empty. The Rock rolled out before him like a petrified sea, its crumpled and dented surface pooled with shadows. Overhead, beyond the lamps, the dome seemed distant as a dream. He thought of German, who in this place had called him a renegade.

  Deep in his left forearm, the old wound throbbed, what he thought of as German’s wound.

  He could not pray. He hated God. His mind churned with a filthy and sinful rage against God. He sat back on his heels and looked out across the Rock, the way to Heaven.

  The King was dead, whom Rannulf had loved, taken not honorably and nobly but piece by rotten piece. As if God were evil, and despised good, and destroyed it everywhere he found it. It was not as the priests said. It was not the world that was wicked; the world was sweet and good and full of beauties, but God blighted it all, save what was false, and that God magnified.