The Land Beyond the Sea

by Sharon Kay Penman

  Isabella slid out of bed, padded barefoot across the chamber to peer out of an arrow slit. All she could see was part of the eastern castle wall and the man-made sheer slope that lay below it; it was called a glacis, for the rock had been smoothed to a glass-like surface, making it impossible for invaders to scale. It was Emma who brought the bad news, telling her that the Saracens were attacking the town. Unlike Nablus, Kerak had walls, but they were neither as high nor as thick as the castle walls and Isabella hated to think what could befall the townspeople who’d pleaded in vain to enter the stronghold.

  * * *

  Isabella and Emma stood, frozen, in the tower doorway, never having seen a scene so chaotic. People were panicking. The noise level was so high that it hurt their ears. The sounds of the mangonels’ stones striking the walls almost drowned out the cries of the frightened animals—the stabled horses and the castle livestock in the lower bailey and the villagers’ sheep and goats huddled in the moat. Some of the refugee children were wailing loudly; others crouched down in the dirt, made mute by their fear, while their mothers sobbed and their fathers prayed. Wounded men were being helped across the inner bailey. Others ran along the battlements, clutching crossbows and bolts. It was like watching a torrent of humanity and neither Isabella nor Emma dared to venture out into that swelling tide.

  They were rescued by the chaplain. Father Nicolas dragooned two of the stable grooms into helping and the three of them formed a battering ram, Isabella and Emma sheltering behind them as they shoved and pushed their way toward the keep. There Isabella was reunited with her mother and Mary. Stephanie was not one to be daunted by war and her nervous servants were soon scurrying back and forth between the great hall and the kitchen, bearing bread and fruit and slices of pork so the wedding guests could break their fast. Isabella joined Stephanie, Maria, Mary, Agneta, and the archbishop at a table on the dais, but no one had much appetite.

  When Humphrey entered the hall, Isabella looked so happy to see him that he flushed. Would she smile like that if she’d heard what Reynald had said? After he’d asked how he could help, his stepfather had snarled, “Stay with the women where you will not be in the way,” loud enough for others to hear; he’d seen the grins and smirks on the faces of nearby soldiers. He’d rather have been tortured than repeat those demeaning, scornful words to Isabella or her mother, so he feigned a smile, telling them that Reynald had instructed him to take care of his bride.

  The hours dragged by. Reynald and his knights and men-at-arms repulsed the first two assaults fairly easily, but the Saracens kept coming, and they held the advantage in numbers. Humphrey escorted Isabella and Emma back to his bedchamber while Maria assisted Agneta and Stephanie in making ready for the likely flood of wounded. Despite Isabella’s pleading, Humphrey refused to take her up onto the roof, saying it would be too dangerous. She’d begun to sulk, in part because she truly could not see anything from the arrow slits and in part to test their boundaries. He seemed so distressed by her disappointment that she began to feel guilty, and she found herself assuring him that she was not really that distraught. It was then that the shouting changed; suddenly they heard nothing but screaming.

  Rushing to the window, Humphrey called to a soldier in the bailey below. Sprinting toward the steps leading up to the ramparts, he yelled over his shoulder that the Saracens had broken through and were in the town. Humphrey, Isabella, and Emma stared at one another in horror, and then he rushed for the door, saying that he had to help and ordering her to stay in the bedchamber, where she’d be safe. He did not take the time to put on his armor, needing his squires’ help for that, just grabbing his sword and scabbard as he disappeared into the stairwell.

  As soon as he was gone, Isabella started for the stairs, too. But she went up, not down, and emerged onto the roof of their tower, with Emma protesting a few steps behind. Earlier, she’d seen men up there. They were gone now, joining the desperate fight to save the town. To Isabella’s frustration, her viewpoint was still limited. While she could see the town, the gate was not visible, blocked by the northeast tower above it. She could see the bridge over the moat, though, and it was packed with people, shoving and pushing and screaming as they tried to escape into the castle. “God help them, Emma!” she cried, for it was obvious that not all of them were going to make it.

  Men on the battlements were trying to shoot crossbows and throw down stones, but they risked hitting the terrified noncombatants or some of their own soldiers, for there was fierce fighting in the streets. Isabella thought she caught a glimpse of Reynald, his sword bloodied up to the hilt. She did not see Humphrey and she began to pray silently, asking God to spare him.

  Emma had been urging her to go back to the bedchamber. She paid no attention, mesmerized by what she was watching. Bodies were sprawled in open doorways and dead dogs seemed to be everywhere, struck down while defending their owners’ homes. A few fires had broken out and smoke was coming from the cathedral. Their knights and soldiers had begun to retreat, trying to make an orderly withdrawal toward the castle, and it was only then that she realized the town was lost.

  “Isabella!” She whirled at the sound of her mother’s voice, for she’d not heard Maria’s entrance onto the roof. “Foolish girl, do you not know how perilous this is?” Grabbing her arm, Maria pulled her toward the shelter of a merlon. Isabella did not protest, for she could still see the battle through the embrasure. Isabella had begun to tremble and Maria jerked off her own mantle and draped it over her shoulders. She’d seen dead bodies before, but nothing like this, and she gasped as a Saracen soldier was pushed into the moat and fell screaming to his death.

  Those crowding the bridge were soldiers now, no longer civilians, and Maria told her the townspeople had reached the safety of the castle. Not all of them, though. The bodies in the streets and female screams offered grim testimony that some had been too slow, too unlucky. What Isabella did not understand—but Maria did—was that the fate of Kerak hung in the balance. Saracens were racing onto the bridge, too, intent upon forcing their way into the castle with the fleeing soldiers. If they succeeded, the stronghold would fall to Saladin, for its defenders would be greatly outnumbered.

  Turning away, Isabella hid her face in her mother’s shoulder, unable to watch anymore. The Saracens surging onto the bridge had suddenly halted and were being jostled and bumped by those following them. Maria was the first to realize what was happening. “Some of our knights must be making a stand on the bridge,” she told Isabella, feeling deep gratitude toward the brave men willing to sacrifice their own lives to save the castle.

  Now that the Saracens were massed on the bridge, the men up on the battlements were shooting crossbow bolts down into their midst, and several fire arrows hurtled through the air to thud into the railing. One of Reynald’s knights came into view, advancing onto the bridge with a torch. When he flung it like a lance, it struck a Saracen soldier, who recoiled and then began to slap frantically at his clothing as it caught fire. The knight had been handed another torch and when he threw this one onto the bridge timbers, it started to smolder. With great courage, the knight held his ground long enough to throw another torch and then hastily retreated when he heard a warning shout from the castle battlements.

  As soon as he reached safety, a pot came sailing over the wall. It shattered on impact, spilling liquid onto the bridge, the smoking torches, even splashing some of the enemy. And then with a blinding flash, the bridge burst into flames. The Saracens were already in flight, but one of the oil-splattered men was not fast enough and became a human torch. By now burning wood was falling into the moat, where it showered some of the bleating goats and sheep. As the women watched in shocked silence, the bridge was fully engulfed in flames, stopping the Saracens from entering the castle, yet also cutting off its inhabitants from the rest of the world.

  CHAPTER 37

  November 1183

  Kerak Castle, Outrejourdain

  Is
abella was alarmed to see blood on Humphrey’s tunic and was very relieved when he assured her that it was not his, that he’d helped several injured townsmen and soldiers into the castle. It puzzled her that neither Humphrey’s mother nor his stepfather offered any praise for what he’d done; she thought saving lives was just as admirable as taking them. But the hero of the hour was Sir Yvein, the knight who’d almost single-handedly held the bridge until it could be destroyed. The meal in the great hall that evening was celebratory in tone because of Yvein’s courage and he was the subject of so many congratulatory wine toasts that by the time he’d reeled off to bed, he’d needed help in finding it.

  The triumphal mood in the great hall did not extend to other areas of the citadel. It had already been crowded; now, with the influx of the townspeople, there was no space to accommodate them all. The peasants found themselves treated with even more disdain, uprooted to make room for these new arrivals. They were no longer allowed to sleep in the vaulted halls of the stables and storerooms, evicted so the more affluent apothecaries and chandlers and farriers could settle their families there, and told brusquely to find places to sleep along the walls of the inner bailey.

  The townspeople were just as wretched as the villagers. At first, they’d been thankful that their lives had been spared. But some became bitter as they realized they’d lost all of their possessions; their homes would be stripped bare by the Saracen soldiers, their larders emptied, and the houses themselves might well go up in flames before the siege ended. Others were grieving for lost loved ones, for the friends and neighbors who’d not been able to reach the safety of the castle. As they talked among themselves, most agreed that Lord Reynald should not have tried to hold the ridge, the castle, and the town, too. They’d been undone by his arrogance. If he’d permitted them to shelter within the citadel from the first, at least they could have taken their movable goods with them, and no lives would have been lost—unless Kerak fell to Saladin. That was a prospect so frightening that none of them were willing to dwell upon it, for they knew what their fate would be then: slavery or death.

  Isabella had heard some of the knights expressing the same anger with Reynald’s strategy, although no one dared to say it within Reynald’s hearing. He remained very much in command, stalking the ramparts like the lions in the bestiaries that Maria had read to Isabella when she was younger. When he was not directing their defense or rebuking the garrison for not showing more zeal, he was up on the walls, shouting challenges and obscene taunts in Arabic. Isabella marveled at his bravado, for if the castle was captured, he could count his life in the span of breaths. All knew that Saladin had sworn a holy oath to behead him personally because of that raid into the Red Sea.

  There were many wounded, both soldiers and townsmen, and Stephanie set up an infirmary in one of the vaulted halls above the stables. The town doctor was among the wounded, so she pressed the women into service, for every lady of a manor or castle needed to have some knowledge of the medical arts and herbal lore. Kerak had been targeted so often by the Saracens that Stephanie had become quite skilled in treating war wounds. Isabella was proud when her mother agreed to tend the injured. She offered to help, too, but Stephanie brushed the offer aside, saying she was too young.

  When Stephanie was not supervising the infirmary, she was conferring with the kitchen cooks, checking the storerooms to monitor the supplies, setting up schedules for meals; it was a logistical challenge just to see that so many mouths were fed. Isabella did not like her new mother-in-law at all, finding her to be almost as intimidating as Reynald, but she had to admire her for her energy, confidence, and capacity for command.

  The first two days after the town fell were not that bad. The primary problem was the overcrowding, for with so many people underfoot, most of them unable to fight, just crossing the bailey was onerous. But on the third day, the Saracens set up more siege engines—six mangonels within the town and two to the south. They soon turned life into a nightmare for those trapped in the castle.

  The air became thick with the dust and debris that swirled into the sky whenever a mangonel hit its target and the constant thudding against the stone walls soon stretched nerves to the breaking point. There was no respite after dark, either, for the sultan kept them operating in shifts day and night. And once they’d calibrated the range of their siege engines, some of the heavy rocks began to crash into the inner and lower baileys, adding a new terror for the besieged. People huddled as close to the walls as they could get, afraid to venture out into the open, for that rain of rocks occasionally proved lethal. They could not even prevent the slaughter of the animals in the moats, had to watch helplessly as daring young Saracens slid down into the deep ditch on ropes and butchered the sheep and goats, sending the meat up to feed their troops.

  The stench of blood and death overhung the citadel like a smothering miasma. The horses were terrified, and even the most docile of animals began kicking against their stalls. The destriers became even harder to handle now that they were deprived of their daily exercise; Reynald’s favorite war horse, a bay stallion with as evil a reputation as Balian’s Demon, trampled a careless groom. Isabella smuggled her small dog from the kennels up to their bedchamber and tried not to think of the stories she’d heard of past sieges, when food ran out and the desperate besieged were reduced to eating the castle’s dogs and cats and finally, even the horses.

  On the seventh day of the siege, Reynald attempted to set up a mangonel of their own on the roof of the northeast tower, over the gate. But the Saracens targeted it immediately, aiming all six of their mangonels at the tower roof, and they reduced the mangonel to kindling.

  Isabella was finding it hard to sleep at night. Even with pillows pulled over her head, she could not block out the rumbling of the mangonels, thunderstorms that never slackened or moved on. She’d placed her dog’s basket nearby and once Humphrey fell asleep, she invited Jordan to jump onto the bed, cuddling with him for comfort. And she kept reminding herself that help was on the way. They’d caught sight of a beacon on a distant hill, which meant that a bonfire had been lit in Jerusalem, sending a fiery message across the miles that relief was coming.

  But would they arrive in time? Was Baldwin strong enough to lead a rescue mission? And even if their army was able to break the siege and drive off the Saracens, she found little solace in thoughts of what would happen next. Once the infidels retreated, she would be reunited with her brother and her stepfather. Then Baldwin would return to Jerusalem and Pateras and her mother would go home to Nablus, leaving her behind in this desolate desert citadel with Humphrey’s sharp-tongued mother and swaggering stepfather.

  On the morning of November 22, the groggy castle inhabitants awoke to excited shouts from the battlements; keen-eyed soldiers had spotted the dust clouds rising above the horizon. A large army was approaching. There was great rejoicing—until the riders were close enough for them to see the banners taking the wind. This was no rescue force from Jerusalem. It was another Saracen army arriving from Egypt, led by the sultan’s brother al-‘Ādil.

  * * *

  It was not until the arrival of Saladin’s brother with the Egyptian reinforcements that Maria seriously began to fear that Kerak would fall to the Saracens. She was not afraid for her daughter’s life or for her own. They’d be such valuable hostages that their good treatment would be guaranteed. She knew, too, that Saladin had a reputation for being chivalrous with women. But much more was at stake than mere survival. The lives of her household knights. The hundreds of noncombatants who’d be doomed to the slave markets of Cairo or Damascus. The price of the ransoms demanded, for they could be high enough to bankrupt a family’s fortunes. And for women, the loss of their honor.

  A woman held captive by the Saracens emerged tainted in the eyes of many, for people assumed she had been violated during her captivity. A husband often put such a wife aside, even if she swore she’d not been raped. The perception almost always pro
ved stronger than the reality. Even a queen had been repudiated, the wife of Jerusalem’s second king. So, for women, ransom did not end their troubles; often it was just the beginning. A wife cast aside for her “failure to preserve the sanctity of the marriage bed” had little choice except to withdraw to a nunnery. Balian had told Maria that Muslims and Jews were more realistic. They recognized that a woman prisoner could not prevent being raped, and so she was not judged as wanton, not harshly blamed in the way that Christian women were. Yet even in their societies, it was believed that death was preferable to dishonor for a female captive, so it was still not easy for a Muslim or a Jewish woman to return to her former life.

  Maria did not fear that she would ever face such a fate. A queen was not cast aside, not if she was an heiress, too. In her case, ending her marriage would also have ended the d’Ibelin claim to her Nablus fief. But she was confident that Balian would not have repudiated her even if she had been violated, even if Nablus were not balanced in the scales. She did not doubt that he loved her. Moreover, he was the fairest man she’d ever known, and unlike so many of his male brethren, he saw the injustice in blaming a woman for being raped. They’d occasionally discussed the plight of female captives and he’d always expressed sympathy for such women.

  Maria’s fears were for her daughter. As certain as she was that Saladin would never permit Isabella to be carnally abused, she knew that was almost irrelevant. Balian seemed convinced that Humphrey had a good heart, but who could say what a seventeen-year-old boy might do in such circumstances? Most likely it would be Stephanie who’d make that decision, for Reynald would never survive Kerak’s fall. And whilst Isabella would be freed to return home if she was rejected by her young husband or her mother-in-law, that would be a short-term blessing, for her captivity and repudiation could damage her chances of making another marriage. Her beautiful, clever, loving daughter might find her only future lay within the cloister.