For the moment he said only, with a smile to his daughter, “I’m glad she could cheer you. She’s good girl.”
“You may go now, Helvis,” her mother told her pointedly. Helvis bobbed a quick little curtsy to Sidon before darting out the door, embarrassed by so much praise.
As the door clunked shut behind her, Ibelin turned his attention from his daughter to his fellow baron. “When you’re well enough, I’d be interested in talking to you about Salah ad-Din. Your men say you were a guest in his camp almost a week before seeking to return to Belfort and triggering the arrest and torture.”
“I’m well enough to talk now,” Sidon assured him, sitting up even straighter and indicating a chair.
Both Maria Zoë and Balian accepted his invitation and sat down, Maria Zoë on a chest by the door and Balian on a chair by the bed.
“What may interest you most,” Sidon opened without further prodding, “is that Salah ad-Din is attended only by his own slaves and his brother al-Adil. Most of his emirs have dispersed, and I overheard remarks that suggested Salah ad-Din was annoyed and disgusted with what he felt was a lack of zeal on the part of his subjects. ‘They think the war is over just because we hold Jerusalem,’ he scoffed, adding, ‘Until we have driven the last enemy of Allah into the sea, we have not finished the task He has set us!’ To which his brother answered, ‘And who failed to take Tyre?’ Then they noticed I had entered the room and instantly dropped the conversation.”
“Do you think he is driven by religious zeal, or greed?”
“Both. He sees our presence as an insult to Islam, but he also wants control of the remaining ports—and Antioch—for the income and prestige they would bring him. He will certainly try to take Tripoli, which he sees as much weaker than Antioch.”
“And Tyre?”
Sidon frowned. “He burned his fingers here once already, and would rather focus on other targets first. If he can wipe out every other Frankish city and enclave, then, he thinks, Tyre will fall like a ripe fruit into his hands. So for now he’d rather concentrate on Antioch and Tripoli. He even restored half of Sidon to me—not Belfort, of course, but he had his scribes draw up a grant that granted me Sidon as my iqta.”
“As a ploy to get you to surrender Belfort?” Ibelin asked, confused.
“No, after he’d tortured me. When I cracked and ordered my garrison to surrender, he had me cut down and taken back to his camp. There he visited me and announced that he felt guilty about breaking his word to me. He asked me to forgive him, and I said something rude. Then he offered me half my barony back, if I would accept it as an iqta with him as my overlord.”
“Did you accept?” Ibelin asked.
Sidon shrugged. “What did I have to lose? Half from him who holds it is better than everything from a man who should never have been King in the first place, and is now himself a prisoner.”
“You swore an oath to Salah ad-Din?” Ibelin pressed him.
“I did, for half of Sidon—but after what he did to me, I don’t trust him. Still, for as long as it suits him, I may be able to hold the city and surrounding lands. We could settle some of the refugees there, maybe. . . .” His voice trailed off as he awaited the judgment of his peer.
Ibelin was torn. Taking an oath of fealty to the man who had destroyed the Kingdom seemed treasonous. But wouldn’t he have done it for Ibelin? He might well have—to have something to give his children. The bitterness he felt at having nothing for them was laid bare when he answered acidly, “So, the only baron of Jerusalem who may hold a handful of land is a man without heirs to give it to. No doubt Salah ad-Din thought of that too, when he made the grant.”
“No doubt,” Sidon agreed steadily, his eyes fixed on the younger man and seeing deeper than was comfortable, “but he may have miscalculated. I am a widower. I could marry again, and I’m not impotent yet.”
“You can have your pick of every maid and widow still in freedom. As the only man with any property, you will be much sought after,” Ibelin noted bitterly.
“True,” Sidon agreed, “but in the circumstances, I can’t afford to marry for fancy. I need a girl who brings me fighting men likely to help me retain that precarious—fiefdom.”
“Fighting men clog this city.”
“And who commands them?”
“Montferrat.”
“Funny. It wasn’t Montferrat that found me, was it?”
“Don’t be deceived, Reginald,” Ibelin warned. “The men with me are men with nowhere else to go, loyal out of habit.”
“There are no better men then that—except the men who command such loyalty. Do you think I’m blind and deaf? Tripoli and I broke out of Hattin, but we failed to open a breach large enough for any infantry to follow. What fighting men are here, are largely men who survived because of your breakout, not mine. They know that.”
“That’s very true, Balian,” Maria Zoë seconded Sidon before her husband could, in modesty, deny the claim. Then she asked Sidon pointedly, “Where is this leading? What are you suggesting?”
“That a marriage to your daughter Helvis, Madame, would be the best means of uniting the few resources left to us and possibly securing the future of both our houses.”
Maria Zoë had already guessed what Sidon was thinking, and was not disinclined in principle, but she noted practically and firmly, “Helvis is not yet ten.”
“And I don’t yet control the coast or city of Sidon. We can make the marriage contingent on me actually taking control. This is about an alliance to secure your husband’s support in taking it.” He glanced at Ibelin, who appeared lost in thought.
“I will not allow my daughter to marry before she is fourteen,” Maria Zoë told him firmly, “whether you control Sidon or not.”
“Fair enough,” Sidon conceded, “but give me a chance in the meantime to convince her that marriage to an old man need not be a terrible fate.”
Ibelin took a deep breath, and Sidon and Maria Zoë looked to him expectantly. The way Balian saw it, although Sidon did not control his fief, his chances of doing so eventually were significantly greater than his own prospects of regaining Ibelin. It also made sense for the two barons of Jerusalem still in freedom to join forces and work together—a partnership that need not be, but was not harmed by, a marital alliance. As for Helvis, it was an advantage that she was too young to have formed affections for someone else. If she knew her fate sooner rather than later, she was more likely to accept it. “What you propose makes sense, Reginald. Let us plan on it, and, God willing, it will be so.”
Aleppo, May 1188
“Tell me about Ibn Barzan,” Imad ad-Din remarked casually, gesturing for his guest, Humphrey de Toron, to help himself to the delicacies spread on the table before him. They were seated cross-legged before a beautifully carved table inlaid with ivory. They were made comfortable by thick cushions and cooled by fans worked by two slave boys standing behind them.
“My wife’s stepfather?” Humphrey asked uneasily. It wasn’t that he didn’t know whom Imad ad-Din was asking about, or that he was uncomfortable talking about his fellow barons. Imad ad-Din and he had discussed the hated Reynald de Châtillon and both of the Lusignans at length. He had even told Imad ad-Din everything he knew about Reginald de Sidon during Salah ad-Din’s siege of Belfort. But Ibelin was different. Isabella loved her stepfather, and part of Humphrey still craved his approval. After all, Ibelin wasn’t a brute like Châtillon; he should have understood Humphrey better. That he didn’t increased the intensity of Humphrey’s confused feelings. Part of him wanted Ibelin’s respect, but another part of him wanted revenge for Ibelin’s contempt. He wanted to prove to Ibelin, more than to anyone else on earth, that he wasn’t a weakling or a fool. But he didn’t know how to do that.
Sensing his reluctance to talk about this particular topic, Imad ad-Din deftly changed the subject. “The Sultan has decided to release the Templar Grand Master.”
That grabbed Humphrey’s attention. He started so violently that he spi
lled some of the lemon-water he was drinking. He looked hard at Imad ad-Din as he asked, “Why?”
Imad ad-Din shrugged and tried to appear casual as he reported, “The Sultan offered him his freedom if he would deliver the castle of Darum.”
“As an exchange?” Humphrey asked, flabbergasted. “The castle for his freedom? But that is against the Templar Rule!” he protested, remembering how Master Odo de St. Amand had refused a prisoner exchange for his freedom. St. Amand had declared that a Templar could not be ransomed in flesh any more than in gold—much less for the betrayal of one of the last strongholds in the Holy Land still in Christian hands!
Imad ad-Din shrugged. “Don’t your Templars swear absolute obedience to their Master?” Humphrey nodded. “Well, Ridefort ordered the garrison of Darum to lay down their arms and surrender the castle to the Sultan, so they did.”
“But—but—” Humphrey could not grasp it. Darum was strategically vital, lying across the caravan route from Egypt to Damascus. It was inconceivable to him that a Templar—any Templar—would consider his own freedom more important than the defense of the Holy Land. Such a trade was in violation of their entire ethos, their very purpose for existence. He had long hated Ridefort, but this seemed the ultimate act of perfidy and cowardice both. “How could he?” Humphrey burst out helplessly.
Imad ad-Din shrugged. “How am I supposed to understand the actions of your religious fanatics? They are not rational and so not comprehensible. I only know that the garrison at Darum laid down their arms and marched out. We have put our own soldiers in it, and so we now control the entire coast from Alexandria to Tyre.” He sounded smug even to Humphrey, who liked to think of him as a friend. Humphrey was spared further discomfort by the unexpected arrival of an old eunuch.
The man burst into the room so abruptly that Imad ad-Din scowled and opened his mouth to rebuke the slave, but the slave had already flung himself at his master’s feet and gasped out: “If you wish to see the daughter of Ayyub alive, you must come to her at once, Master. For the women say she will surely not last much longer.”
The expression on Imad ad-Din’s face changed instantly. All anger vanished, replaced with shock. “But she is young and healthy!” he protested.
“She was two days ago when she started her ordeal, but she is also very thin and fragile. The child will not come, and her strength, the women tell me, has been bled away until she can fight no more.”
Humphrey wished himself at the other end of the earth, conscious that no half-stranger (as he was) had the right to witness this intimate moment.
Imad ad-Din was in shock, and various emotions seemed to be warring in his breast, reflected by a tortured expression on his old and usually serene face. “Little Aisha!” Humphrey heard him gasp out, and tears flooded his fading eyes. Then he frowned and his expression became fierce. “No!” he shouted. “NO! I don’t believe it! I won’t accept it! Send for my sister, the wife of Moussad, at once! She will know what to do better than the stupid geese here!”
Beatrice prayed to God for forgiveness as she brought the filthy linens to the laundry for the umpteenth time. Some part of her Christian soul knew she ought to feel pity for a fourteen-year-old struggling to bring her baby into the world, but Aisha had been too heartless and selfish a mistress for Beatrice to feel anything but satisfaction. Imad ad-Din’s other wives were all older women, women he had married in his youth, women who had borne him several children and were each in their own way both weary and wise. Not one of them had been kind to Beatrice, but they had not been cruel, either. They recognized that she was a slave because of misfortune beyond her control. For them it was simply the will of Allah that she had to accept, no less than they did.
Aisha, on the other hand, had come to the household after the death of Imad ad-Din’s second wife. At thirteen she was still very young, but she had rapidly recognized that her sixty-something husband was smitten with her. He had lavished gifts on her, unable to deny her any wish, and neglected his other wives in his eagerness to savor her charms. The knowledge that she was the master’s favorite rapidly went to her head. She relished showing the other wives that she could get whatever she wanted, while they were rebuked for their “greed” and “covetousness” if they asked for the smallest thing. She ate in front of them the ice and figs they had been denied, and she laughed and stuck out her tongue when the First Wife tried to rebuke her.
To the slaves she had been even worse, of course. No one ever pleased her, and she threw temper tantrums that included not only throwing things at whoever offended her, but also scratching their skin with her excessively long nails or spitting on them. She had taken particular pleasure in mocking Beatrice, calling her “my lady slut” and “my lady whore,” asking how many men it had been the night of her capture. Was it three or four, or maybe even a dozen or a score? What had it been like having so many different men inside her, one after the other? Had she been able to climax for them all? Her questions had been so shocking that the First Wife had intervened, chiding Aisha for immodesty and sending Beatrice away to spare her further indignity. But Aisha had pursued the game whenever the others were out of hearing.
Beatrice straightened and put her hands to the small of her aching back. “Christ forgive me,” she muttered, “but I hope she dies, and her little Muslim brat with her!” With a sigh she reached for the clean linens, stacked neatly on shelves outside the laundry. She had stacked them there herself after taking them down from the line this morning and folding them exactly as instructed. (When she first came, she had often been slapped or kicked for doing things the Frankish way.) As she took the clean sheets, she was reminded of the effort that went into making them so—something she had not appreciated in her former life. Clean linens had simply been her right as a lady, and laundresses were an almost unseen part of the household. They were generally widows or other poor women who were allowed to sleep in a dormitory and eat at the bottom of the table in exchange for keeping clean the underclothes, bedclothes, and tablecloths of their lord, his family, and his retainers.
But just this morning she had stood for hours over a cauldron full of boiling water, stirring the clothes as the steam drenched her in sweat and scalded her hands. The lye soap stank and stung, and the smell of it up close almost choked her. The skin of her hands was permanently red and rough from exposure to the damp heat and lye steam. She avoided looking at them now, because they made her sad. Once, she had loved her long-fingered hands, adorned with rings. . . .
Entering the long, dingy corridor between the laundry courtyard and the harem, she was startled when the delivery door suddenly crashed open and people poured inside. They were chattering Arabic much too fast for her to understand it (although her command of the language had improved from the rudimentary Arabic of her former life to serviceable Arabic now). An elderly woman was removing her veils, now that she was inside, and handing them off to the woman behind her as she questioned the eunuch leading her toward the harem. She was dressed in very rich robes decorated with strands of gold, Beatrice noted with wistful envy. Most notable, her tone of voice was commanding; she was obviously a First Wife in some important man’s household, Beatrice concluded.
The next instant, Beatrice was distracted by the realization that the woman trailing her, who had also removed her veils, was blond! More than that, she looked familiar. “Jesus God and all his saints! Constance!” she called out in utter amazement.
The woman spun about, startled, and then let out a cry of recognition so piercing it stopped her mistress and the eunuch in their tracks. They turned back angrily and saw the two Frankish slaves fall into each other arms. A moment later they were chattering in French, oblivious—and utterly indifferent—to the disapproval of the others.
“Beatrice! Beatrice!” the newcomer gasped, clinging to her. “I never thought I would see you again! Oh, sister! What of your children?”
Beatrice clung to her younger sister as tears streamed down her face. “Don’t ask. Let us ins
tead be thankful for this moment.”
Constance was crying, too. Her heart-rending wails came from the depths of her being as she folded her head upon her sister’s breast and sobbed like a little child. She did not see the look of astonishment on her mistress’ face, much less hear the sharp question from the eunuch demanding an explanation.
“She is my sister,” Beatrice told him, meeting his glare firmly. “You may flog me till I die, if you like, or kick me till my guts spill out my mouth, but you will not stop me from holding my own sister!”
“Leave them!” Constance’s mistress snapped. “We have more important things to do!” She swept on in to see to her sister-in-law, leaving the Christian slaves alone in the hall.
Tyre, July 1188
“My lord,” Ernoul started earnestly. He was dressed in his best, scrubbed down and newly shaved. He had evidently been lying in wait for Ibelin to return from training (an activity Ernoul no longer engaged in).
Ibelin was sweaty and dusty from the tiltyard, and annoyed because the colt he had been training had been in an ornery and stubborn mood. He had been ready to kill it for dog meat—if he hadn’t been so desperate to sell it for a profit to some unsuspecting newcomer. Then again, he couldn’t afford to get a bad reputation. . . . “What is it, Ernoul?” His tone reflected his mood: irritable and impatient to wash up.
Ernoul was usually sensitive to people’s moods, but he’d been waiting too long and was too wound up. “My lord, I—I want your permission to marry.”
“Marry? You are a penniless squire, who stands to inherit nothing, and won’t ever again lift a sword in jest or anger. The very food you eat at my table is charity! You are in no position to marry, and that’s an end of it.”
“Yes, my lord, I understand, but Alys—my wife, I mean my wife if you’d let me marry her—would help out. She’d earn the keep for both of us, I promise.”
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