The Last Crusader Kingdom
Page 32
John had not translated his father’s remark, and Father Andronikos did not request one. He announced instead: “The monk is Brother Zotikos of Antiphonitis.”
John, having passed the message, added in a whisper, “I recognize him! He’s the same monk who told the men in Famagusta it was as wise to kill a little viper as a big one—meaning me.”
His father turned and stared at him in shock; John had forgotten that he’d told his mother of the incident in Famagusta, but not his father. “I’ll tell you later!” he promised, as there was no time for an explanation now. Brother Zotikos was striding toward them, his eyes burning with hatred.
From the top of the escarpment, Sir Galvin and Ibelin’s other men watched anxiously. They shared Ibelin’s assessment of the sailors, and while they could not see Brother Zotikos’ eyes, they hardly needed to. His every gesture exuded hostility and aggression, so much so that Barry lowered his head and curled his lips in a threatening stance. Sir Galvin glanced over his shoulder to Sir Sergios. The Maronite Syrian had served the Count of Tripoli at Hattin, but had been fighting under Ibelin’s banner ever since the great armed pilgrimage from the West that had wrested control of the coast back from Saladin. He was a superb archer, and he already had his bow out of its case. His quiver hung from the pommel of his saddle.
Sir Galvin nodded to him, and he fitted an arrow onto the string, lifted the bow, pulled the string back to his ear, and looked down the arrow with narrowed eyes at his target: the Greek monk’s broad chest. He nodded, then gently eased the string back to the uncocked position, yet kept the arrow notched. At this range, he was confident he could kill the Greek monk before he could do any harm to their lord.
None of Ibelin’s men could hear what was being said, but they could see the monk gesturing wildly with his arms. He threw them out wide, then rotated his right arm like a windmill. Then his hands formed fists that he held under Ibelin’s nose. A moment later he thrust out an index finger and jabbed the air in front of Ibelin’s face—eliciting an angry warning bark from Barry, whom John was visibly restraining from attacking.
Throughout it all, Ibelin appeared impassive. His stance was relaxed, his arms akimbo, his weight on his right leg with his left bent and slightly forward. His men recognized he was actually poised to swing his weight forward with his right fist if he needed to. Compared to the apparent flood of words that accompanied the dramatic gestures of the monk, Ibelin appeared to say very little. Once or twice he lifted his head as if to make a short remark. Each time his words provoked a new round of angry gestures from the monk, followed by increasingly violent gestures from Barry.
Once Father Andronikos tried to intervene, only to harvest a series of stabs with an index finger in his direction from the younger cleric. John, meanwhile, was having trouble holding his dog, and was clearly distressed, confused, and a little frightened. He looked at his father for guidance, but the elder Ibelin remained calm, signaling for him to restrain the dog.
“I don’t think things are going well,” Sir Galvin observed generally, and Georgios shook his head sadly.
Abruptly, Ibelin turned his back on the monk and started back up the escarpment. The monk shouted furiously after him, making Georgios wince at the crude threat. Sir Galvin looked over, on the brink of asking for a translation, but then thought better of it. On the beach Father Andronikos was evidently trying to reason with the angry young monk, his hand on the latter’s arm. The younger man shook him off, and with a violent, dismissive gesture started striding toward his boat. The sailors were already shoving it back into the water; the stern floated while the bow remained on the sand, ready for Zotikos to re-board.
Ibelin reached the top of the escarpment slightly breathless from the climb, and held out his hand for his sword belt. “Hopeless!” he announced to his men, snatching the belt and wrapping it around his waist to buckle it snugly. “He insists that they will keep fighting until we are either driven from the island like the Templars, or all dead.” He grabbed the reins of his stallion, threw them back over the horse’s head, and gathered them up as he pointed his toe in the stirrup to haul himself into the saddle.
He was so agitated that he swung his horse around and started to ride off before John had had a chance to mount. Then he caught himself and waited, his expression grim.
“So they wouldn’t consider exchanging the abbot for Toron?” Sir Galvin asked, puzzled and disbelieving.
“No. That monk is a fanatic. He is incapable of compromise or negotiation. Saladin was pure reason compared to him!”
John’s seat hit the saddle, and his father set his horse into a canter from a standstill. He had rarely been so angry. Most of all, he hated to think that his nephew Henri de Brie was right: that the only answer to this rebellion was to crush it with unrelenting and merciless force.
Paphos
It was a long time since Maria Zoë had seen her husband this upset. He could not sit still, but instead paced around the hall, the heels of his boots clacking on the marble floor. It had been dusk by the time he and his knights had returned, and the bells ringing across the town to the north now marked vespers. Georgios entered with a burning reed with which to light the lamps, and as he went from one brass lamp to the next, the mosaics on the walls began to glint in the firelight. In the groined arches overhead, the gold stars painted on the blue field caught the light of the lamps and began to twinkle. It was for this reason that Maria Zoë loved this room after dark.
In his present mood, however, her husband had no eye for the beauty around him. “The man’s a fanatic,” he kept repeating. “A blind fanatic who cares nothing about the cost of his intransigence. He literally said he would rather see the entire island go up in flames than give us a single a province, a single city, a single inch of his ‘sacred’ Cyprus! He was no more rational than John’s damned dog!”
“And does he answer to no one?” Maria Zoë asked cautiously. “Surely a man so young is not the leader of the entire rebellion?”
“He said he answered only to God!” Balian scoffed.
“But he is a monk. He must have vowed obedience to his superiors.”
“Yes! The abbot whom Barlais so stupidly threw in his dungeon,” Ibelin snapped back. “I think we did this damned madman a favor by freeing him of any restraining voice of reason!”
“Do you think that if you released the abbot, he might be able to bring his subordinate to reason?”
“After a month in Barlais’ tender care? The abbot is more likely to have been radicalized himself! Prison rarely breaks strong men. Think of Reynald de Châtillon. He endured fifteen years in horrible conditions to emerge more violent and hate-filled than ever before. My fear—”
A knock on the door silenced Balian; he cut himself off to call out, “Yes?”
The door opened and Georgios bowed. “My lord, Father Andronikos is here and begs an audience.”
Balian shrugged and gestured for the squire to bring him in. As they waited, he remarked to his wife, “Father Andronikos is not to blame for this outcome. I believe he is sincere in wanting peace.”
Maria Zoë nodded agreement, and then rose to her feet as the Greek priest was ushered in. Father Andronikos bowed his head first to her and then to her husband. Balian indicated he should take a seat, and sent Georgios for wine and nuts.
“I won’t stay long,” Father Andronikos countered. “I simply came to beg a favor of you, my lord.”
Balian raised his eyebrows as his wife translated, and indicated with open palms that the priest should continue.
“There is a very wise man on this island, a highly educated hermit, who lives in a cave less than a day from here. He—he is greatly venerated among the people of this island. Many believe he is a living saint.” Father Andronikos paused so Maria Zoë could translate.
As she finished, Balian pressed him to continue with an audibly skeptical, “Yes?”
“I want you to come with me to meet him,” Father Andronikos confessed.
&
nbsp; “Alone, I presume,” Balian noted cynically as his wife translated.
“With your son, or your Greek squire—but no other men, and unarmed.”
Balian nodded, his expression grim, when she explained the terms. “I thought as much,” he remarked sharply.
“This is not a trap, my lord, I swear it upon my soul,” Father Andronikos assured him, clasping the silver cross he wore on his breast. “I have taken the captive Frankish lord there for safekeeping as well. You will be able to see him if you come with me.”
Maria Zoë could not restrain her own excitement as she passed this information to Balian. The news made Balian catch his breath, and they held each other’s eyes for a moment as Father Andronikos continued. “Father Neophytos is very strict about excluding women from his monastery,” Father Andronikos explained apologetically to Maria Zoë in Greek, “or I would welcome your presence on our journey, my lady.”
“No,” Balian said sharply, mistaking the meaning of the monk’s remarks so evidently directed at his wife rather than himself. Answering what he thought the monk had said rather than his actual words, he announced, “My lady and my son stay here. I will travel with Georgios alone. When do we leave?”
“If we can leave just before dawn, my lord, that would be best. From the northern gate.”
Balian nodded agreement, and through his wife answered, “I will meet you there at dawn.”
By midmorning, the trail into the wooded flank of Troodos had become so steep and rocky that Ibelin had to dismount and lead his palfrey Hermes. The stallion was not happy, and kept stopping to look around as if he expected lions to jump out at him from the surrounding woods. To a horse born and raised in Palestine, forests were strange and dangerous places.
Ibelin wished he didn’t share his stallion’s apprehension. There was, he thought, something primordial about a forest as thick, dense, and tall as the one that surrounded them. The trees reached forty or fifty feet into the sky, higher than any mast he had ever seen; their trunks were broader than a man could embrace with his arms, and their roots twisted between the rocks with the power to crumble them.
As they climbed higher and deeper into the forest, a silence encased them. The sound of the sea was long since silenced; they were nowhere near habitation, and even the wind seemed to have been absorbed by the trees. There was just the chink of hooves on the rocky trail and their own heavy breathing—and the birds, of course. They called sharply overhead or twittered near at hand. Large birds of prey occasionally flew up, startling Hermes into abrupt sideward leaps or making him stand quivering as he looked about expecting the next attack.
Just about noon, when Ibelin was hot, sweaty, and hungry, Father Andronikos turned sharply to the left, leading them down an even narrower path that wound its way in zigzags down a fold in the mountain to emerge in a clearing beside a stream. On the far side of the clearing, a sheer rock outcropping reared up, pierced by several caves that opened some fifteen feet above the valley floor. To the right, beside the stream, was a small chapel, and beyond it several flat-roofed huts.
Several monks emerged out of one of the houses, and one came to meet the three men. He crossed the stream on stepping stones while holding the skirts of his black robes out of the water. Father Andronikos went forward to meet him and they spoke together in low voices, the monk frowning darkly at Ibelin and Georgios. “He’s protesting our presence, my lord,” Georgios whispered. “He says Father Andronikos had no right to bring Latins here.”
Father Andronikos did not appear intimidated, and answered calmly. Georgios narrated: “He is vouching for us, my lord. He insists that we be allowed to see Father Neophytos.”
The local monk answered sharply, gesturing angrily, but then he turned and splashed back to the far shore, ignoring the stepping stones and getting his bare feet wet, but still holding the skirts of his cassock out of the water. Father Andronikos followed him, but Ibelin and Georgios opted to remount for the crossing and arrived on the far shore dry-footed.
Here they were required to dismount again, and Father Andronikos asked them to wait while he went to the face of the rock and called up in the direction of the caves. After he had done this twice, a rope ladder was flung out of the cave, and Father Andronikos hauled himself up the face of the cliff one difficult step at a time until he reached the ledge outside the entrance. He left the ladder and disappeared inside the cave.
After that, nothing happened for a long time. Ibelin considered his surroundings. The stillness of the forest was broken by the gurgling of the stream, which rendered it less ominous. Furthermore, to build the church and dwellings, the forest had been felled, expanding the clearing. As a result, the sun poured down, bright and warming. Because they were surrounded on all sides by higher peaks and slopes, there was no wind. Protected from wind and warmed by the sun, the little valley was already ablaze with wildflowers, and the grass was long and rich. The two horses were grazing contentedly, occasionally expressing their satisfaction with short, conversational snorts.
“Kirios Ibelin!” The voice came from the ledge before the cave. Father Andronikos was standing there waving. “Ela!” (Come).
Ibelin and Georgios got to their feet, and Ibelin led the way up the ladder. As he reached the ledge before the entrance, Father Andronikos backed up into the cave, as there was room for only one man on the ledge at a time. Ibelin ducked through the entrance and immediately caught his breath in amazement and wonder. He was standing in the nave of a church carved completely out of bedrock. Even more astonishing, the walls were adorned with paintings in vivid colors. Lifelike and life-sized figures on the narrow wall to his left depicted a tall golden-haired angel with spread golden wings hovering over a kneeling maiden: the Annunciation. Along the wall ahead of him, in painted arches, were the Nativity, Christ teaching in the Temple, Christ sharing the loaves, Christ turning water to wine, Christ walking on the Sea of Galilee. . . .
Behind him Georgios gasped as he too stepped inside the stone church. Ibelin glanced over his shoulder at his awestruck squire with a smile of shared emotion. These were some of the most beautiful paintings either of them had ever seen—not excluding the paintings in the Holy Sepulcher, Nazareth, and Bethlehem.
Father Andronikos was standing at the wooden screens dividing the far bay of the little church from the nave they had entered. He was smiling faintly, evidently enjoying their reaction. “Father Neophytos brought a famous artist from Constantinople to do the painting. Your wife may have heard of him,” Father Andronikos remarked: “Theodoros Apseudes.”
Ibelin nodded absently as Georgios translated in an awed whisper. It wasn’t that Georgios had ever heard of the artist, but anyone brought from Constantinople sounded impressive, and the graceful vitality of the paintings spoke for themselves.
“Come.” Father Andronikos gestured again for them to come with him through the screens, and somewhat hesitantly Ibelin and Georgios followed. They found themselves in a small semicircular chamber from which another door led out the far side. On their right, however, an altar carved out of rock was lit by several candles that burned on either side of a silver icon showing the Virgin with Christ in her arms.
Ibelin and Georgios both went down on one knee facing the altar and crossed themselves. Ibelin said a Pater Noster, adding at the end a formless prayer for assistance from the Prince of Peace. When he finished, he found the door from the room beyond filled with a tall, thin monk with a gray beard that was longer, though not as full, as Father Andronikos’. Ibelin got to his feet, but respectfully bowed his head to the old man.
“You are a Frankish lord,” the old man said in a firm, dry voice.
Georgios whispered the translation into his ear from behind, and Balian answered, “Yes. I am Balian, Baron of—”
“Ibelin. I know. You defended Jerusalem against the infidel Saracen.”
It surprised Ibelin that Father Andronikos had provided such a comprehensive biography, but he bowed his head in acknowledgment.
Ibelin nodded, and Father Neophytos continued, “I do not write simply about theology. I have been recording the events of the world, particularly as they affect this island, because they may well indicate that the end of the world is coming. Since the death of Manuel I, Constantinople has fallen into the hands of unholy men, while holy Cyprus has been visited by the tyranny of the cruel and rapacious Isaac Comnenus. Worst of all: Jerusalem has fallen to the infidels. A dire omen.”
Ibelin was discomfited as Georgios translated this last sentence. He wondered just how much guilt for the loss of Jerusalem the Cypriot monk placed on his individual shoulders.
“Not all the armies of the West could drive the infidels out of the Holy Land,” the monk continued. “Rather, they brought new horrors, for although the English King ended the rule of terror by Isaac Comnenus, the traitorous scoundrel turned around and sold this sacred island—as if it were nothing more than a pasture or a piece of livestock—to that horde of money-grubbing abominations that call themselves by the heathen name of the Knights of the Temple! How do men dare to call themselves Christian monks when they bear arms? How dare they take their name from the Jewish Temple? Surely they must know they are an offense to God!”