These men reported that a mob two to three hundred strong had attacked the Hospitaller commandery as darkness fell on Friday night. The attackers were not heavily armed, but the Hospitallers swore they must have been tipped off that the Hospitaller commander and all ten knights had left Kolossi to answer a call for assistance from a Venetian vessel in distress off the coast. At the time of the attack, therefore, only the Turcopoles, hospital staff, and lay brothers were on the premises. Furthermore, the factory had already closed for the day. Except for the night watchman, who tended the vats, the workers had dispersed to their homes in the surrounding villages.
Because the Hospitallers had taken over the factory and manor only eight months previously, they had not yet built any kind of defenses. Low stone walls marked the perimeter, while the manor itself consisted of a rectangular stone building over a vaulted chamber that was partially underground. The hall was accessed by a broad exterior stairway, but there was neither a gap nor a drawbridge separating the top of the stairs from the building. The hospital was nothing but a low vaulted chamber of fieldstone held together with mortar. The church was an old Greek structure, another low vaulted building with a single apse and narrow windows.
The Hospitallers had not been expecting any kind of aggression against them. They had established a hospital that served the poor of the surrounding countryside, and had been treating no fewer than thirty-two patients when the attack occurred. In addition, they had restarted production in the sugar factory, which had lain idle since the fall of Isaac Comnenus, thereby providing jobs to half a hundred workers from local communities. The Brothers of the Hospital were unanimous in expressing their bewilderment at the attack.
“Had there been complaints about wages or the like?” Lord Aimery asked the senior Turcopole.
“No, not at all! We pay better than the local landlords, let alone the mines! Besides, it wasn’t our workers who did the damage. The mob consisted of outsiders, for the most part. We recognized only a handful of local youths, troublemakers we had dismissed.” The Turcopole was lying in the Templar infirmary, his head bandaged over one eye and his arm in a splint, evidence of his efforts to stop the mob.
“This sounds well organized,” Lord Aimery observed dryly.
“Very well organized! They came armed with clubs and axes and they had torches, too. But they looted first. They took not just the plate and furnishings from our hall, they took the wine from our cellars, the grain stacked there, and the olives, too. They even stole the personal belongings of the patients—their own people!—before setting the building on fire!”
“With the patients still inside?” Lord Aimery asked in horror.
“No, no, they dragged them out into the yard, and then went in and searched for valuables, stuffing anything they found into sacks they’d brought with them. Then they set the place on fire.”
“Who was leading them?” Lord Aimery wanted to know.
“A monk, a Greek monk!” the Turcopole reported, spitting on the floor to show his contempt.
“Young? Old? Fat? Thin? What can you tell me about him?”
“He was young, no more than twenty-five. Not tall, but strongly built with a barrel chest. If it hadn’t been for his robes, I would have taken him for a blacksmith or a carpenter. He had a thick black beard, like they all do, and a broad, strong nose. His most striking feature, however, was his eyes: they burned with hatred.”
“Anyone else you noticed?”
“Not really. It was getting darker by the second and the torches and fires were blinding, casting everything else into shadow.”
Lord Aimery nodded understanding, and asked if there had been serious casualties. The Turcopole reported that no one had been killed and that he and the other Turcopoles had suffered no injuries more serious than broken bones and bruises, but that the patients and lay brothers serving them were traumatized. There had been four women patients, all more or less elderly women, and they were saying they would never return to Kolossi. One was even demanding admission to a nunnery, although she had not been violated, just roughly handled and insulted.
“They demanded our names—almost as if they were looking for someone, or at least Franks.”
Lord Aimery nodded. He had heard similar stories. The rebels might steal from their fellow Greeks if they were, like the workers and patients of the Hospital, benefiting in any way from the new regime, but they didn’t want to kill their fellow countrymen. Even the Turcopoles were probably spared greater violence because they were natives of Syria, Orthodox rather than Latin. The worst violence was reserved for Latin Christians—Franks and Italians, but especially Franks.
“What happened to your priest?” Lord Aimery thought to ask.
“They stripped him naked and bound him backwards on a mule. Then they hit the mule on the rump to make him run away. We found him the next morning in a field several miles away, still tied to the mule, scratched, cut, and bruised from collisions with trees and God knows what else. He was in a terrible state of mind. He had seen the fires and assumed we were all dead.”
Despite these stories, it was still the smell and sight of the gutted sugar factory that shocked John the most. It was just four months since he had visited his father’s sugar mill. His father had led him around, pointing out the equipment and explaining the process of cutting, crushing, and boiling the raw sugar multiple times until thick molasses formed and dripped into pottery molds. At the time, he had been bored and only pretended interest to please his father. Yet he understood instinctively that his father had spent so much time explaining things to him because he was proud of reopening the sugar mill. From his father’s description of all the problems encountered and costs incurred, John understood it had been very difficult. It would have been no different at Kolossi. The Hospitallers had invested time, money, and heart’s blood to get this factory working again. Now it was a charred hulk oozing foul-smelling smoke, and the floors were glazed with sticky black pools of burnt sugar.
“Why burn down the sugar mill?” John asked. “It benefited the people in the local communities.”
“And because of that, the locals are not so hostile to Frankish rule. The rebels want everyone to hate us,” Lord Aimery answered. “What I don’t understand is why the workers didn’t defend their livelihoods, their employer, their hospital. And who tipped the rebels off that the knights were away? They clearly didn’t want to risk a fight with armed knights. Or should I rather ask, who sent word to the commander that a Venetian ship was in distress just down the coast? A phantom ship, it seems, as the Hospitallers rode up and down the coast all night looking for it and never saw any sign of it.”
They had not been able to talk to the commander of the Hospitallers at Kolossi, because he and his knights had already left Limassol by ship to report to headquarters in Acre. All in all, Aimery did not think the Hospitaller commander had covered himself in glory, but it wasn’t his business. The Order would have to deal with him.
“Do you think you could find anything out from the villagers?” Lord Aimery asked his squire.
John shrugged. “I doubt it. I’m dressed like a Frank.”
“Try. I’ll be in the church.”
While the interior of the manor house and hospital had been torched after the looting, the church had not. The rebels had, of course, helped themselves to the cross, candlesticks, and even the icons, but they had not burned the building itself. Tethering his horse outside, Lord Aimery slipped into the empty church to await his squire’s reconnaissance.
John, with Barry loping behind him, rode the half-mile to the nearest village, which sat astride the Limassol-Paphos road at the place where the road to Kolossi branched off it. The village consisted of a well, a threshing floor, and a church similar to that at Kolossi, surrounded by some two dozen low cottages covered with rough, dirty plaster and topped by flat roofs.
As John approached, the barefoot children ran away to their respective houses, and the chickens in the yards scattered.
A woman at the well, hearing the high-pitched screams of the children, paused, looked over her shoulder, and at once let go of the rope to flee down the street. The released bucket splashed at the base of the well and the spool continued to unwind several turns, unraveling a yard of rope.
John stopped and looked around for someone to talk to. The village appeared abandoned, but he was certain that many eyes were watching him from inside the narrow windows.
With a sigh he dismounted, tethered Centurion, and approached the first house, with Barry at his heels. He knocked on the closed door. Something scraped and bumped on the far side, but no one answered his knock. He went on to the next house. This time he could hear voices, but still no one answered. Moving to the third house, John felt foolish and frustrated, but he stubbornly decided to knock at every single cottage.
At the fourth, the door cracked and he looked into the face of a young woman. She was anything but pretty. She had a mouth full of crooked teeth and her nose was set at an angle in her face. She looked up at him with the blank eyes of the mentally deranged. “I’m trying to find out what happened to the hospital,” John explained.
The girl shook her head vigorously and tried to shut the door in his face.
John got his foot in the door and shouldered it open. Although the girl tried to stop him, she was much weaker than he, and when she realized it was pointless, she ran to the back of the room and squatted down on the far side of a central hearth with her arms crossed over her head. It made John feel like a marauder.
His eyes swept the room, and he felt his mouth go dry as he registered just how poor these people were. There was literally nothing in this cottage but straw pallets on the floor and a pottery cauldron sitting somewhat precariously on some fieldstones that surrounded a fire. The cauldron was steaming lightly and smelled of garlic, while smoke clouded the whole room; there were neither chimney nor windows for the smoke to escape. An old crone squatted beside the cauldron and squinted at him silently, not daring to challenge his intrusion.
John knew it would be pointless to ask her anything about the attack. He shook his head, mumbled an apology, and withdrew, abandoning his plan to go to every house. Instead, he collected Centurion and rode on to the next village.
This was far enough away so that people did not immediately make a connection between a young Frank and the attack on Kolossi—until he started asking questions. Then they clammed up, shook their heads, and denied all knowledge of events.
Frustrated and hungry, John wanted to return to Kolossi so he and Lord Aimery could get back to Limassol for the night. He did not want to spend a night surrounded by the charred remnants of Kolossi. It emanated not only a foul smell but an ominous threat from the still-smoking ruins. On the other hand, he was reluctant to return to Lord Aimery empty-handed, and so with a sigh he stubbornly retraced his way through the nearest village to continue on to the village farthest west.
Two priests stood talking in front of the small church, but they slipped inside at the sight of John approaching. John had spotted them, so he rode straight to the church, tethered Centurion to a ring on the surrounding low wall, and ordered Barry to stay with the horse. Barry dutifully sat down at Centurion’s feet as the horse voraciously tore up tufts of grass and weeds from the base of the low wall with his teeth.
The door was so low that John had to duck to enter the little church. It was so dark inside that the only thing he could make out was burning candles lighting up a silver icon of the Virgin with the Christ Child on her arm. Immediately John went down on one knee, shoving his coif off his head at the same time. He crossed himself and silently prayed to the Mother of God for help. “Holy Virgin, Lord Aimery wants these people no harm,” he argued with her in his mind. “We want to end the violence. Please help me. ”
When he stood, his eyes had adjusted enough to see the two Orthodox priests—or rather, a priest and a monk—staring at him warily from the railing before the dark, dilapidated screens. He approached them and addressed them respectfully in his best Greek: “Good sirs, forgive me for interrupting, but I was hoping you could help me.” The looks of astonishment on their faces to have a young Frank address them in fluent Greek pleased John.
Their surprise also gave him a moment to study them. The priest had wavy gray hair and a soft, fluffy beard of the same color, but his face was not really old—no older, John guessed, than his father. It was marked by lines made more by smiling than frowning. The monk, on the other hand, was younger, with dark hair and beard, and his face was lined by anger. It also reminded John of someone, but he couldn’t quite remember who.
It was the monk who replied hotly, “What do you Franks need help with? Killing, burning, and raping?”
The priest immediately put his hand on the younger man’s arm and shook his head. “Curb your tongue, Brother,” he told his companion before addressing John to ask, “What might we be able to help you with?”
“The hospital at Kolossi was attacked last Friday by a large mob. They plundered the entire complex, even the church,” John stressed, “and they stole from the patients as well. The priest was stripped naked and tied backwards on a mule and then chased away.” As he related this incident John watched the faces of the two men opposite him. The monk frowned, while the priest raised his eyebrows and looked over at the younger man as if asking for verification.
“He was not harmed—unlike many of our priests, monks, and nuns!” the monk defended the outrage. “Indeed, no one was raped or killed.”
“You seem to know a great deal about what happened,” John observed. “Can you tell me more about who was involved in the attack and why? Why attack a hospital caring for the poor? Why destroy a factory that brought work and income to these poor communities?”
“The land was stolen from us! It is our land! Our country! You are not welcome here!”
“Would it be better for people to have neither medical care nor jobs?” John asked with the simplicity of youth.
“You understand nothing! Just like the rest of your stupid, brutal, barbarian people,” the monk dismissed him angrily.
“You say he understands nothing, yet he asks good questions,” the priest spoke up in a calm, firm voice. “It is what my parishioners have been asking me all week,” he added. “They had little enough as it was. Now they have nothing. They do not know how they are going to feed themselves, and they are terrified of retribution. Up to now, all the trouble has been in the north and east; now they fear the Franks will come and take revenge on us here for this.”
“The Franks need to be shown they are neither wanted nor invincible! They need to learn they have no place here, and that we can fight them! You,” the monk turned on John, “you are not wanted here! Go back where you came from!”
“I can’t,” John answered, his beardless chin raised in proud defiance. “Salah ad-Din took it away.” He pronounced Saladin’s name as he had learned it, in Arabic.
“Well, go fight him for it, then! Just because you were beaten by the Saracen doesn’t give you the right to steal from us!” the monk snarled back, raising his voice in anger.
His elder colleague laid a hand on his arm again and spoke to John in a reasonable tone. “Tell us, young man, do you know what will happen to the innocent people who had nothing to do with this attack? Will Lusignan send men to scourge the villages that have already suffered?”
“Not all the villagers were innocent, my lord,” John countered. “Some were young men dismissed from work for being troublemakers—”
“Patriots!” the monk corrected.
“That’s enough!” the priest admonished his colleague. Turning again to John, he asked, “If we were to deliver to you the ringleaders, would you spare the others?”
The monk gasped in shock and looked at his colleague in outrage. The priest looked him straight in the eye as he spoke in a slow, deliberate, and admonishing tone. “Don’t you think that is fair, Brother Zotikos? Young men who plunder, burn, and terrorize a hospital
are not productive members of society.” Turning back to John, he noted sternly, “But we must have a guarantee that the innocent people will be left in peace. Many of my parishioners have come to me in tears saying they will help rebuild everything, if only the Hospitallers will return and re-establish the hospital and the mill. They deeply regret what has happened. They should not be punished.”
“I will tell my lord what you have said. I’m sure he will want to discuss this with you. Who should he ask to speak with?”
“I am Father Andronikos. He can find me here any time. And who is your lord?”
“Lord Aimery de Lusignan,” John announced proudly, harvesting a hiss of hostility from the monk and a startled look from Father Andronikos.
“And you?” the monk snarled. “Who the hell are you, and where did you learn Greek?” He inferred that John’s command of Greek was tantamount to deception.
John smiled at him and announced with relish, “My name is John d’Ibelin, and my Greek I learned from my mother, Maria Comnena.”
The name had the effect intended. The clerics dropped their jaws and gaped at him in astonishment.
John took advantage of their amazement to bow deeply to the priest and nod curtly to the monk, then he turned and exited the church, trying hard not to reveal his excitement. Outside, he untied Centurion and pulled himself up into the saddle, so full of pent-up hope that the old horse picked up his ears and started prancing in anticipation. John was so elated, in fact, that he felt almost as if he were flying as they cantered along the road back to Kolossi, with Barry pressed hard to keep up. This little incident convinced John he had inherited some of his father’s diplomatic skills, and that made him immensely proud.
Nicosia, Cyprus
Lord Aimery was considerably less ecstatic about John’s “negotiations.” He pointed out that they had no way of knowing if the priest would deliver the real culprits—or someone else. He also grumbled about the fact that it would be hard to convince his brother to agree to talks—but he eventually agreed to try. They spent the night with the Templars at Limassol again and headed for Nicosia the following day. They arrived well after dark in a rain shower, and Lord Aimery opted to get out of their wet clothes, have a warm meal, and confront his brother in the morning.
The Last Crusader Kingdom Page 14
