Jerusalem

by Cecelia Holland

  Agnes now understood the joke about the back door, and burst out laughing. Tripoli colored, his mouth sour. “You are merry, my lady,” he said, stiffly. “Merry the devil at the news of sin.” He stared away coldly into the drizzling rain.

  The little boy grew steadily sicker. Agnes saw him every day; when he could not leave his bed, she sent again to her daughter, down in Jaffa, and this time Sibylla came, in secret, like a thief, so that Tripoli did not know she was there.

  She had gotten past her husband by sending him off hunting, and told him some good lies, on top of it; but she would not go to see the little King. She said, “He has never been my child.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Agnes said. Sibylla gave her no answer, but then Joscelin de Courtenay arrived, and Agnes saw them talking together and knew they were planning how to seize the advantage at the child’s death. That was why she had come, then.

  She went to her daughter again, and said, “Come see the boy. He may live only a few days more.”

  Sibylla was fretful, taut, her skin pale, her eyes sleek. She said, “Am I to have the chamberlain announce me? Hear, hear, my lord King, let me introduce you to your mother? What use is it?” In by the hearth, fat Joscelin de Courtenay sat with his feet to the fire, dozing.

  That night, late, the Templars sent a servant to Agnes; and she went off across the city in the dark and the cold and the rain, and stood there by the bed and watched the little boy struggle for his last breath. When he was clay, she saw that the red knight was weeping, and the black knight beside him close to weeping.

  Her heart was a knot in her chest. She went back to her palace, in the dawn cold, and woke her daughter in her bed.

  Sibylla sat up, white as shell; before her mother could speak, she said, “I shall go today, I think. I shall go to see him today.”

  Agnes looked at her with eyes boiled dry. “He is dead.”

  Her daughter’s lips parted. “Oh, no,” she said.

  “Yes,” Agnes said. “And now he is out of your way, isn’t he? And now you may do what you have plotted and planned for, all these years—that for which you have spent your honor and your child’s life, and God knows what other, hidden prices—now, go be Queen of Jerusalem, my dear, and see what happiness it brings you.” Then she rose, and went straight out of the palace, and went back to her own home of Nablus, and there, at last, alone, she untied her heart in a stream of tears.

  In the chapel of the palace Beauregard, the Templars stood watch over the little King’s coffin, and Tripoli came, and Joscelin de Courtenay.

  Tripoli said, “By the terms of the will of Baudouin the Leper, I am now King of Jerusalem.”

  Joscelin said, “That is so. But as we are kinsmen, and fellow Christians, I must warn you that Jerusalem is not safe for you.”

  Rannulf stood at the head of the coffin, his hands folded over the hilt of his sword, and looked straight ahead of him; the words of these men fell on his ears like evil music.

  Tripoli said, “No, I fear not. De Ridford will seize any chance to interfere, and there is Kerak to consider also.”

  “You must make your claim as strong as you can,” Joscelin said. “Go to Tiberias, and call a council there of all the great men of the Kingdom. Let that council proclaim you king.” Joscelin laid his hand on the coffin. “The Templars will take this back to Jerusalem, and see to the burial. When everyone has accepted you as King, you can come into the city to be crowned.”

  Tripoli said, “What you are saying makes sense to me. I shall leave in the morning for Tiberias.” He turned and went out of the chapel. Joscelin bent his knee, and said a prayer, and he too left.

  Stephen said, “Joscelin said what Tripoli wanted to hear, and so he believed him.”

  The candles by the coffin were burning down, and Rannulf went forward and took new ones, and lit them, and set them into the melted stubs. Kneeling down, he crossed himself and said a paternoster. The candles made an island of light around the coffin; the rest of the chapel lay in darkness.

  He felt all around him a great churning and stirring, all set in motion around this small death.

  White-eyed, Stephen spoke into the silence; he said, “How can we trust anything, then? Tripoli is a clever man; if he is so easily gulled, what hope for somebody like me?”

  “What else are you going to do?” Rannulf asked.

  It was deep in the night, the vigils bell had long since sounded. Between them was a coffin, and the body of a child they had both loved. He felt as if Stephen talked to him across a widening chasm.

  Stephen said, “I have to believe in something. I can’t say my prayers to a void.”

  “Believe, then,” Rannulf said.

  “How can I, when I see how everybody else deludes himself? They are all as sure as I am. More! Because I doubt everything now.”

  Rannulf shifted his feet. In the darkness, he heard the sound of a door opening and shutting.

  He said, “Just believe, Mouse. Either Jesus died for us, and so we can be saved, or he did not, and we are damned. So better to believe, either way.”

  “I can’t,” Mouse cried, and then, from the dark, she walked into the glow of the candles, up to the far side of the coffin.

  Rannulf said, “I knew you were here. When Joscelin spoke, I heard your words in his voice.”

  Before the coffin, she stood slim and straight in a long white gown, her eyes huge. He was tired and he saw her in the middle of a well of streaming light. She spoke out of the light. “Tomorrow Tripoli leaves for Tiberias. And I for Jerusalem, and there I shall be crowned the Queen.”

  “Why are you coming here, now, and telling me this?”

  “Because I want you to stay out of it. Of all the men in this kingdom, you alone I cannot foresee.”

  Rannulf shifted his feet. “How can I stay out of it? I am a knight of the Temple of Jerusalem.”

  “Then tell me you support me. I was born to this, to rule Jerusalem. Who else is there?”

  “There is Tripoli. Who also talks about peace with Saladin.”

  “Tripoli is a usurper. God wills that I be Queen, Rannulf. I will bring God’s purpose at last into being in this Kingdom. I will make peace, bring an end to the bloodshed—we turn the Holy Land into a slaughter ground, which should be the garden of the world!”

  “God wills it,” Rannulf said.

  “No!” She flung a fiery look at him, like an angel’s sword. “God does not will this endless war. God is not evil.”

  “God is not good. God is, is all.”

  “You blaspheme! You pull everything inside out, good is evil, murder is piety, life is hell, and Heaven is a battlefield. While people are suffering and dying you make sermons saying God wills it!”

  Rannulf could not take his eyes from her. He leaned forward, and banged his knuckles on the coffin. “Sibylla, I stood guard over his deathbed. Where were you?”

  Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened a moment, but she said nothing; she turned and walked away, back into the darkness.

  Stephen said, “You called her by her name.”

  “Did I.” He was exhausted. He wanted to sink into an oblivion of sleep.

  “You’ve talked to her before,” Stephen said.

  “At Montgisor. When I killed Guile. They were going to hang me, and she saved me. She alone spoke for me, and saved my life. I love her. I would fight the whole world for her. I always end up fighting her instead.”

  “Now she will make herself Queen.”

  “God willing.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we obey orders. Which is all we ever do anyway. We never have all that much choice, do we? Why worry about it?”

  “What about you and her?”

  “What?”

  “Have you slept with her?”

  Rannulf s hand clenched. “Don’t talk about her like that.”

  “You haven’t, then.”

  “How could I? She’s married, she is a princess, she’ll be Queen of Je
rusalem. I have no choice here either.”

  Stephen was staring keenly at him. “What if you did? What if you could have her, if you gave up God?”

  “That will never happen,” Rannulf said.

  Stephen shook his head. “You’re as bad as any of us, Rannulf. You have no faith either. You just give it away. Obeying orders. That’s your faith, and that’s nothing.”

  Rannulf made no answer. After a moment he crossed himself again. He knew Stephen was right. They stood there the rest of the night, and said nothing more to each other.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Guy de Lusignan reached Jerusalem just at sundown, as the gate was closing. The streets were full of Templars, standing guard on gates and on the walls, and riding in packs through the streets. Guy went straight to the citadel; in the courtyard, he met Gerard de Ridford.

  The Master asked him, “Are you ready?”

  Guy said, “I don’t know. I don’t understand what’s going on. Where is my lady wife? She’s supposed to be off in a convent in Sidon.”

  “She is here,” the Master said. “She was in Acre, when the King died—she and Joscelin have handled things very well, so far. She’s gotten Tripoli out of the way, and the Patriarch is of course amenable to anything. He has brought out the sacred oil and the crown and the cape; tomorrow he will anoint her Queen of Jerusalem.”

  Guy looked up at the tower, a square stone blade against the dark. A crack of yellow candlelight showed in the window. She had lied to him. All the while he had missed her, and wanted her back, and thought she was off doing pious works, but she had lied to him.

  He wished he had not let de Ridford know this. Everybody would think him a fool, if they knew he could not control his own wife.

  She was up there now, and he knew how tight she would be strung, so close to her goal; she would be burning. The fire in her drew him irresistibly. He started forward and the Master gripped his arm.

  “No. Heed me. You remember, I told you once, you would be King of Jerusalem.”

  “You did,” Guy said.

  “Good. Now be guided by me. Tomorrow, when she takes the crown, she must give it to you. Promise her whatever you need to, but she has to give the crown to you, or all is lost—no man can follow a woman into war. And so Tripoli might still triumph.”

  Guy licked his lips. He had long before lost interest in de Ridford’s endless fussing and plotting and tugging on strings. His gaze rose to the orange light in the window. “I have to see her,” he said, and went forward, across the courtyard to the staircase, and up. De Ridford followed, a few paces behind.

  He hated this place, so close and dark. He had been here only once before, to present himself to Baudouin the Leper, and he thought he could still catch a taint of the stench of sickness and death, even on the stairs. He went up through the crowded landing where people were jostled together in the dark, waiting, and into the hall beyond, with its three narrow windows, its raised platform for the throne.

  She did not sit on the throne, but stood in the middle of the hall, in the light from all the lamps.

  “No, why wonder?” she was saying, when he came in. “Tomorrow night it shall all be done, and let him find out as he will.” All around her stood the men who supported her; the Master came in behind Guy. She went on, “Until we see what he will do, no one is to move. Let him misstep.” Her voice was high and strong. As she spoke, she was turning to look from man to man, and now her gaze found Guy. Her face opened in a blooming smile. “Ah, you are finally come.” She stretched out one arm to him.

  He went up beside her, taking hold of her hand, and stood there next to her. “Darling,” he said, “you were supposed to be in a convent praying.” He clutched her hand, holding her fast. His gaze searched her. He wanted to get her away from all these people; a lusty urgency drove him, he needed to possess her, to make certain of her. He glanced around him at the packed room, at all these rivals.

  He looked out over a field of bent backs. Just inside the door, the Master of the Temple lowered his head an inch. They were all bowing. Amazed, he realized they were bowing to him. He clung to his wife’s hand, and looked down into her face, and saw her smile.

  Guy felt a jolt of understanding, as if he had suddenly wakened up. He was going to be the King. He struggled to get his mind around this truth, that he was going to be King of Jerusalem. God was wonderful. He almost laughed out loud. He still gripped his wife’s hand; he lifted it, and kissed it. His head swam. He could forgive her a few lies now. He kissed her hand again, amazed.

  There was no pomp in this coronation. In haste they gathered under the dome of Holy Sepulcher, the lords packed shoulder to shoulder in rows before the altar, the Templars along the walls; here where only a year before they had sworn to uphold the will of Baudouin the Leper, they overturned his will, and saw Sibylla crowned the Queen.

  She sat before the altar, facing them, the great cape around her like an ill-fitting carapace. When The Patriarch Heraclius set the iron crown on her head, she seemed to flinch, as if it weighed more than she had expected.

  Then her husband knelt before her, the first of her vassals to do homage to her, and with her two hands she reached up, and from her sleek coiled hair she lifted the crown and set it on her husband’s head. And then all the men before her gave a shout of triumph, as if they had seen something glorious.

  Half the lamps had gone out. In the dim light under the dome, the surface of the great Rock seemed to move and shift and seethe. At the edge of it Rannulf sat on his heels, his hands idle, and his mind idle, and de Ridford came up behind him.

  Rannulf did not look around, and he said nothing. Finally de Ridford spoke. “You know Kerak has put a price on your head.”

  “If Kerak had any balls left he’d come after me himself.”

  The Master gave a grunt of a laugh. “I’ve always admired your sheer brass. It took me a while to realize it’s all sham. What do you think Tripoli will do next?”

  “He’s in a very strong position. He holds the north in a solid block. Half of Outremer follows him and not this straw King you and the Princess have foisted on us. He has a truce with Saladin, that lets him turn his back on Damascus.”

  The Master walked up closer to the Rock, into the edge of Rannulf’s field of vision. “Then you think he will attack us.”

  “No,” Rannulf said. “He should. But he won’t. He’s too cautious. He’ll wait and see, and then march and countermarch, and the longer Guy is King, the more King he is.”

  He had stood in Holy Sepulcher and watched her crowned. He had not seen her since then. But she would not leave his mind; even here, he thought of her, and not of God. And he hated her husband.

  De Ridford hated Tripoli. “Then perhaps we should attack him.”

  “He’s a Christian,” Rannulf said.

  “In name only! It’s said he prays toward Mecca, in his own chapel—that he keeps an idol of Mohammed under the altar.”

  Rannulf laughed at that, for the first time looking around at de Ridford, who knew so little about his enemies. Of course de Ridford’s chief enemy was Tripoli. The Master’s face was intense as a fire, his eyes blazing.

  “You laugh! And yet you yourself saw him with Saladin. I heard your men say how the Sultan loves him. Their testimony convicted him before the whole chapter—why does it not convince you?”

  “He’s a Christian, and my vow forbids me to strike against other Christians.”

  “Bah, you are his fool. He has you completely gulled. I suspect you and your guard failed your job, in Acre, and he poisoned the child King under your nose.” The Master’s eyes were narrow. “Or you are treacherous, and in league with him. No matter. I despise Tripoli, and I mean to destroy him, no matter what the cost. As for you, churl, whatever I order you to do, you will do, or I will cut you down. Hmmm? I’ll have your own men cut you down. Do you understand?”

  Rannulf considered that a moment; then he said, “Yes, my lord.”

  De Ridford smiled
at him. “Someday, Rannulf, you will beg me for my favor.” He went out of the church, his feet loud across the ambulatory.

  Rannulf sat looking out at the Rock. Since he had come back to the Temple from Acre he had given himself up to the routine of its chores and hours, saying his offices when the bells rang, caring for his horses and his weapons, working at the practice butts, patrolling the city; he took a certain pleasure from having everything there before him, in knowing exactly what he would do next. Yet he was uneasy. He could feel something coming toward him that he had to be ready for. Sibylla played at being Queen, de Ridford blinded himself with his little feud with Tripoli, but there was something coming that could drown them all.

  Mouse came up beside him. “What was that all about?”

  “You heard him.”

  “What do you think he’s going to do against Tripoli?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t much care, Mouse.” Rannulf got up, his knees cracking, and bowed to the altar, and signed himself with the Cross. “Come down to the stable and help me with my new horse.” He started away toward the door, Mouse walking beside him.

  In the spring, when the dyers were spreading their cloth to dry on the rooftops of Jerusalem, and the first caravans were moving along the Jaffa road, Saladin sent an embassy with his greetings to the new Queen and her King.

  The Legate of the Name was Tabib the Ethiopian, the eunuch, who delivered the Sultan’s speeches and gifts. Behind him, in among the other seconds, Ali stood with his hands folded, marking this new King.

  Nobody knew anything of him, save that he had come from France, which seemed to spew forth a constant stream of these yellow-headed, loud-mouthed, energetic men. This one fit the mold. He was square-shouldered, jut-jawed, younger than Ali himself; he stood up before his throne, and his voice rang out through the crowded hall.

  “I accept these presents and greetings from the Sultan of Damascus. But let him not think us weak, and easily bought off with pretty toys and words. My lord the Count of Tripoli made this truce between us and Damascus, but when the truce is over, let the Sultan beware: he will find us ready with our swords in our hands.”