“Your grace.” Henri d’Ibelin appeared in the wooden doorframe between the two rooms of the King’s suite and bowed his head.
“Call the guards. Tell them I can’t speak with a man in this state. Have them take my brother down for a bath and shave, and tell them to find him some clean clothes. Really, this is unacceptable!” His tone was more petulant than commanding, but Aimery narrowed his eyes. His brother was acting like a man in a position to give orders, and that had not been the case the last time they’d met.
Henri, who spoke Arabic very well, opened the door and addressed the guards waiting outside. Aimery watched their reaction alertly. One bowed deeply and the other ran off, apparently to seek guidance from an officer. Aimery could detect no particular surprise at his brother’s request. He looked back at his brother. “What’s happened?”
“I’ll tell you as soon as I can stand to be within three feet of you,” Guy answered, withdrawing a little farther. Then, softening his insult with a little crooked smile, he added, “All I will tell you now is that it is good news. Very good news, in fact.”
“For you, or for all of us?” Aimery asked skeptically. He had never met another “king” who thought so singularly of himself alone. When he remembered how King Baldwin had tortured himself in his suffocating mask, dragging his rotting body around in the heat and the sand for the sake of his subjects, the contrast between the selfless leper and his selfish brother made him want to weep—or vomit.
“You’ll see!” Guy countered with a self-satisfied smile, leaving Aimery no choice but to gratefully accept the bath and change of clothes.
The bath was very thorough. Aimery was taken to a bathhouse outside the citadel but only a stone’s throw away from it, and turned over to the professional attendants. These men made no faces at his appearance or smell—but they made him strip naked in a small courtyard, doused him in cold water, and then scrubbed him down with horsehair brushes and sea sponges before letting him into the actual baths. After he’d been allowed to lie in the steam room for a half-hour to sweat out even more of the dirt, they soaped him down again, scraped the suds and dirt off him, and oiled him. Then he was given a loose cotton kaftan and cheap, new sandals, before being led to a barber who removed his beard and most of his hair. Feeling better for the bath but naked in the kaftan that billowed around him and let the hot breeze tease the bare body underneath, he was taken back to the citadel and his brother’s tower suite.
“Ah,” Guy greeted him, “that’s much better. Now come sit here at the table and share the fruit and bread. No wine, I’m afraid, but soon.”
“Meaning?” Aimery asked, as he cautiously sank onto the wooden chair opposite his brother. The table and chair were of Frankish manufacture—probably captured somewhere, Aimery noted mentally. They had evidently been brought to furnish the King of Jerusalem’s prison tower as a courtesy. They enabled him to sit upright at meals in the Frankish fashion, rather than lounge at a low table like their jailers.
“Meaning,” Guy answered, beaming with pride, “I have secured our release!”
“Our release?” Aimery pressed him, afraid to rejoice too soon. He could not overcome his mistrust and resentment of a brother who had never once protested the conditions in which his fellow prisoners were kept.
“The Sultan has generously agreed that I may take ten other captives with me. That’s what I wanted to consult you about. Which of the others should I pick?”
“Slow down,” Aimery urged. “You are to be set free? Just like that? Was a ransom paid? By whom? How could Hugh come up with a king’s ransom?” His brain had started racing once the news penetrated his defenses.
“No ransom at all,” Guy replied smugly. “Don’t you remember? The Sultan promised to set me free if I talked the garrison of Ascalon into surrendering—and then broke his promise.”
“As I recall,” Aimery remarked carefully, “you suggested surrender to the garrison if they had no reason to expect relief in the short term, but you did not flat-out order them to surrender the town.”
“That was because I wasn’t sure they would obey me. I thought by giving them an excuse to say no, I wouldn’t expose my own weakness.”
Aimery raised his eyebrows, surprised, but relieved that his brother at least recognized that he did not command much respect among his subjects. Out loud he merely remarked, “Evidently the Sultan was not impressed by your sincerity.” Guy shrugged. “No matter. Sibylla has been bombarding him with letters accusing him of dishonor for not keeping his word, so he has offered to release me, in exchange for an oath to quit the Holy Land and never take up arms against Islam again.”
“That’s all?” Aimery asked, flabbergasted.
Guy beamed and opened his arms in a gesture of openness. “That’s all!”
“And have you? Taken the oath, I mean?”
“Not yet. We’ll have to go by way of Damascus, and I’ve already been told a priest will be in attendance. But then, Salah ad-Din has promised, we will be escorted to Tripoli.”
Aimery was still trying to absorb the implications of all this. His brother was prepared to renounce his kingdom and sail away to the West. At first that seemed mind-boggling. Then again, since there was only one city of the Kingdom left, maybe, in practical terms, Guy was not sacrificing very much. But how on earth would Sibylla react? It was her kingdom, after all. Then again, she was so selfishly enamored of Guy that she would probably follow him anywhere. A woman stupid enough to choose voluntary imprisonment would surely run off to the West without a second thought. But what about the others? The barons and bishops born and raised here? And what about the tens of thousands of settlers? The latter certainly didn’t have wealthy brothers back in France to whom they could return. And what about the Holy Land itself? Were they going to just turn their backs on Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and all the other holy places? What about the native Christian population, whose oppression under Muslim rule a hundred years ago had ignited Pope Urban’s pity and sparked his appeal to liberate them? Were they all to be abandoned?
As he sat there in the citadel of Aleppo, facing the prospect of freedom only on the condition of abandoning the Kingdom he had adopted fifteen years earlier, Aimery was astonished to realize that he did not want to return to France. He was not willing to turn his back on the Holy Land. He wanted to fight for it. “Will we all be expected to swear the same oath?” Aimery asked anxiously.
Guy looked surprised by the question and answered indifferently, “The Sultan’s letter didn’t mention anything about that. I shouldn’t think so.”
Aimery smiled cynically. He supposed that in his brother’s mind, the rest of them were so unimportant that their oaths were superfluous. Very likely, Aimery reflected, the Sultan shared the same view. What danger were men without land, without vassals, without tenants or the means to pay mercenaries? What danger were men who could hardly afford to buy a warhorse or new arms to replace those forfeited at surrender?
Aimery was beginning to see the logic behind the Sultan’s apparently generous offer. Salah ad-Din probably calculated that the bulk of his prisoners could not raise a ransom, since he now controlled their lands, so there was little point in continuing to hold them. He either had to kill them, which would have been dishonorable and against Sharia law, enslave them, or set them free. While enslaving them was within his right, he appeared to have sufficient respect for his former opponents as noblemen not to exercise this option. For that Aimery was intensely grateful. He was even grateful for the Sultan’s presumption of his inability to cause him trouble. The Sultan clearly thought he had won so completely that he could afford to be generous. But by the grace of God and in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Aimery swore to himself, we will show him he is wrong!
His brother, meanwhile, was cutting into a pomegranate and prying it open over a glazed pottery plate. With his thumb he started to break the ruby-red kernels out of the leathery skin as he explained to his brother, “I’ve been g
iven just two days to decide whom to take with me, and I’m only allowed to take ten other prisoners, but there are eighteen prisoners of note. Oh, and I’m taking Henri, so there’s really only nine others I can take. You, of course, and the Bishop of Lydda. Then I was thinking of Caesarea, and the poor old Marquis de Montferrat.” The Marquis had been returned to them after Salah ad-Din had abandoned his siege of Tyre at the start of the year. From him they had learned that Conrad de Montferrat commanded the defense at Tyre, and also how the Sultan had tried to force him to surrender the city by humiliating his father before his eyes. They had been shocked by what the old man had gone through, yet heartened by the spirited defense of Tyre and the capture of half the Sultan’s fleet.
“But I can’t decide about the last five. Bethsan? Scandelion? Hebron, perhaps?”
“I’m not sure Hebron would leave without his son; or he might give his place to his son,” Aimery remarked with respect. Hebron was the kind of man who thought of others first, and he would probably put the freedom of his son and heir ahead of his own freedom.
Guy was continuing, ticking off the barons held in captivity at Aleppo, “Then there’s Nazareth, Jubail, Haifa, Toron—”
“You can’t pick Toron!” Aimery interrupted sharply.
“Why not?” Guy asked innocently.
“Haven’t you seen or heard anything?” Aimery asked back in exasperation. “Toron’s been given favored treatment by the Sultan’s secretary—and you can be sure there’s a reason! If he hasn’t converted, he’s been giving them intelligence. Whatever he’s been doing, he deserves no reward from you. I wouldn’t trust him farther than I can throw him.” Only as he said it did Aimery realize just how much he hated Humphrey de Toron for the special treatment he had received: for his baths, clean clothes, clean water, and good food. He accepted that his brother had been treated better; Guy was, like it or not, an anointed king. But Humphrey was just one of them, a baron of considerably lesser importance than Caesarea, and younger than all of them.
“Well,” Guy agreed amiably, “he’s off the list, then. Who else is left?”
Together the brothers Lusignan chose from among the remaining prisoners and passed these names to the commander of the citadel. It was he who would remove the lucky men from the dungeon, see that they were cleaned up and provided with clothes, and house them separately for the last night of their captivity. Aimery, for the first time, was allowed to share his brother’s accommodations.
Damascus, June 1188
The magnificence of the Sultan’s palace in Damascus could hardly be described. It wasn’t that the Franks didn’t have silks, gold and silver, ivory, glass, and mother-of-pearl, but the sheer abundance of these materials and the Saracen love of intricate and detailed decoration made each room a kaleidoscope of color and luxury unlike anything most of them had ever seen. Brightly glazed tiles in vibrant turquoise, aqua, and blue set off carpets of red, gold, and cream. Cushions clothed in shimmering red and orange silks and adorned with golden tassels were tossed upon the bright floor. The intricately carved tables were inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, and even the plaster on the walls had been cut away in elaborate geometric designs that intersected and intertwined. Over everything, running along the length of wall about ten feet above the floor, was a broad band of blue tiles containing verses from the Koran engraved in gold.
The palace was intended to impress all who visited, and it did not fail to do so. While Guy kept muttering about the amount of gold and silver and the wealth they represented, Aimery was more unsettled by the number of fountains that ran perpetually, filling round and oblong pools surrounded by magnificent gardens overflowing with blooming flowers. That said to him that the rains had been exceptionally good this past winter (while he was in a windowless dungeon unable to judge for himself). In short, neither drought nor famine was likely to curb the Sultan’s thirst for further conquest.
Equally disturbing was the number of fine soldiers: both the uniformed Mamlukes and the peacock-like emirs dressed in silks glittering with jewels. Salah ad-Din had put his entire power on display here, Aimery concluded, and it was daunting.
The audience chamber itself was huge, with a high ceiling composed of three rows of small domes supported by pillars so fine they hardly seemed suited to supporting the weight of the roof. The windows were covered with latticework shutters that let in the light and a breeze, yet kept out much of the heat.
As intended, by the time the Frankish prisoners had been brought through the series of magnificent rooms to the foot of the dais on which the Sultan sat surrounded by a brilliant cast of courtiers, the prisoners were thoroughly intimidated. Most of them went down on at least one knee in reverence, and only Aimery’s firm grip on Guy’s forearm prevented him from doing the same. “You’re a king!” Aimery hissed in his brother’s ear, while dropping to one knee himself. Guy, confused and unsure of himself, bowed stiffly but deeply.
The Sultan asked something, and Henri d’Ibelin spoke up, explaining to the others, “He asked if any of us speak Arabic.”
“You aren’t the only one,” Haifa reminded him a little sharply.
“But better that I serve the lowly role of interpreter than you, my lord,” Henri countered deftly with a smile.
Haifa shrugged, and let Henri serve as their interpreter.
Henri extended the Sultan’s greetings (which were formal but not warm), and then the Sultan gestured to a man behind him, who bowed, withdrew, and returned with a bent old man. Translating, Henri explained, “He says this man was the abbot of the Convent of the Holy Trinity in Edessa and has been his prisoner for forty-five years.” The man bowed deeply to Guy de Lusignan, but his expression was bewildered and his eyes were opaque with cataracts. At another snap of the Sultan’s fingers, another man emerged, and he advanced carrying an object that made every Christian in the room gasp. It was the beautiful jewel-studded golden reliquary that had been created to carry a fragment of the True Cross. The Franks had last seen it on the field of Hattin. They had seen it cast down by angry Saracen soldiers, trampled, and ground in the dirt.
The Bishop of Lydda dropped so abruptly to his knees that the sound was jarring, and Hebron hissed, “That’s only the case. We don’t know the Cross is still inside.”
The Sultan seemed to understand what was happening without translation, for he snapped another order, and the young man carrying the reliquary opened the latched door to hold it toward the Christians. Now all the Franks went down on their knees, ignoring the sneers and shaking heads of the Sultan and his court.
Henri alone spared the Saracens a glance. He understood perfectly how much they despised the Christians for revering a piece of wood. To them this was pure idolatry, and proved that the Christians had primitive beliefs. They did not understand that, far from revering a piece of wood, the Frankish lords revered the abstract concept it symbolized: Christ’s sacrifice for mankind. The barons of Jerusalem knelt from shame because they had failed to protect Christ’s homeland, symbolized by this piece of wood.
The Sultan was impatient. He had other important business. He ordered Guy de Lusignan to come forward, lay his hand on the reliquary, and take the required oath. Guy, feeling more uncomfortable than ever, awkwardly got to his feet, and advanced to stand in front of the Mamluke holding the True Cross. He was ordered to kneel by the “abbot” and place his right hand on the reliquary.
“Swear,” the Sultan ordered through Henri d’Ibelin, “that you will leave Syria, cross the sea, and never again take up arms against the followers of the Prophet Mohammed, may peace be upon him and his name.”
“I’m supposed to wish the Prophet Mohammed peace?” Guy balked.
“No, just swear you will leave Syria, cross the sea, and never again take up arms against Muslims,” Aimery hissed.
Guy looked doubtful, and Aimery held his breath, the very stench of the dungeon suddenly vivid again. After comparative comfort and freedom during the last fortnight, he could not bear the though
t of a return to the darkness and mold of the dungeon. Don’t balk, he silently begged his brother. Take the damn oath! Take it!
Guy shrugged his shoulders, laid his hand on the reliquary, and loudly declared, “I swear—”
“In the Name of Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost—” the abbot (evidently well prepped for his role) interrupted.
Guy gave him a disgusted look, but dutifully recited “. . . in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, that I will leave Syria, cross the sea, and never again take up arms against the followers of Mohammed.” Then he stood again and glared defiantly at the Sultan.
Salah ad-Din stared at him, and his courtiers stared at their Sultan. Aimery started praying silently again, terrified that the Sultan was about to change his mind or demand further conditions. When Salah ad-Din spoke, however, it was only to remark, “Now we will see if you are an honorable man.”
Henri translated, and Guy visibly bristled.
Again Aimery found himself pleading silently to his brother to keep his mouth shut. Just don’t say anything, he urged him mentally.
One of the men behind the Sultan—Henri didn’t recognize him—scoffed that the word of all Christians was worthless. Another added, “These pig-eaters have no honor.” The Sultan hissed them silent, adding: “We will see.”
“As we saw with Ibn Barzan,” a young man, whom Henri took to be one of the Sultan’s seventeen sons, muttered sullenly.
“You bark like a puppy,” his father told him. “When you grow up you will learn—I hope—to know the difference between a man like Ibn Barzan and this man who calls himself a king.”
“What did he say?” Guy asked Henri uneasily.
“He just told his son that he was too young to speak up on an occasion like this.”
“Then we’re done?”
“Yes.” Henri bowed deeply to the Sultan, received a gesture of dismissal, and bowing again, told the others they should withdraw backwards for three steps before turning to depart.
Envoy of Jerusalem Page 19
