They set out across town, following the sound of the disturbance. By now the sun had set and the streets were cast in shadow, but unlike most evenings in Acre there were no taverns spilling tables into the squares. There were no hawkers on the corners offering pre-prepared food, wine, or ale. The storefronts were closed and barred from the inside, and shutters were closed over windows.
The sounds of rioting grew steadily louder and nearer, and soon the smell of smoke reached them, too, making the horses skittish. Quite abruptly, as they followed a jog in the street, they came upon a large crowd of people cowering together in a cul-de-sac. They were keening and lamenting, some of the women tearing their hair and some of the men shaking their fists. Opposite them, a half-dozen soldiers were smashing open windows and doors or already dragging valuables into the street to stuff into their tunics. John felt a shudder run down his spine. Then he spurred his reluctant horse forward and clattered in among the looters, his sword drawn, to underline his shouted orders to desist.
The sight of an armed knight made the men drop what they were doing and fall back into the nearest alleyway. Delighted by this easy success, John and his men followed in pursuit. Unfortunately, the alley led to a larger square around the synagogue. The latter was already smoldering, although it had not truly caught fire. Here the number of men engaged in the looting numbered in the scores. John sat back and hauled his stallion to a halt. “I think they’re too many for us!” he shouted at Sir Galvin. “We need reinforcements,” John concluded.
Sir Galvin grunted in reply as he, too, pulled his stallion to a stop. He added, “I’ll go rouse the f***ing garrison! The lazy bastards!”
“I’ll try to bring the royal guard. One of you go back to Haakon’s Ghost for help.” John answered and asked his horse for a canter.
At the palace, the guard opened the gates for him without question, but John shouted down at them, “What the hell are you doing? There are hundreds of German soldiers looting and trying to burn down the synagogue!”
“Our orders are to protect the palace. You can’t stop the Germans anyway. They’re barbarians!”
“Where are the German nobles?” John answered, while his horse, responding to the restlessness of his rider, kept turning and scrambling on the cobbles.
“They’re staying in the Archbishop’s palace,” the sergeant-in-command answered, gesturing to the large building diagonally across the street.
John swung his horse around and trotted across to the Archbishop’s palace, snuggled up beside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Here the sergeants at the gate did not immediately recognize the Ibelin arms on his surcoat; it had grown too dark to distinguish color. They blocked his way belligerently.
John was getting increasingly desperate. He shouted at them, more forcefully than ever before in his life: “I’m John d’Ibelin, brother of the Queen, and I demand to see Conrad of Hildesheim immediately!”
John knew who to ask for, because the Imperial chancellor and commander of the German crusaders was the same man who had crowned Aimery King of Cyprus only two weeks earlier.
The guards caved in before John’s imperious manner, and he found himself in the courtyard of the Archbishop’s palace. He jumped down from his borrowed horse and took a moment to orient himself. He had been here only once or twice before, but fortunately for formal occasions, which meant he knew his way to the Archbishop’s great hall. It helped that torches were lit along the inside of the arcade, and also up the stairs to the second floor. John took the stairs two at a time, conscious that the synagogue could be ablaze by now. Certainly the damage and destruction continued with each minute.
He burst into the Archbishop’s great hall to find it already crowded with men milling about and, to his relief, the Archbishops of Acre and Hildesheim sat together on the dais. They were apparently in earnest discussion with a number of noblemen. John pushed his way through the seething crowds in the lower hall, unable to understand what was agitating the many occupants, because they were all speaking German. He sprang onto the dais, provoking a tardy response from a young knight in Hildesheim’s service. The latter tried to put himself between John and the men at the table, but John shoved him aside so forcefully that two German noblemen sprang to their feet with their hands on their hilts.
“My lord of Hildesheim!” John called out to the Imperial Chancellor from half a dozen feet away. “Your men are plundering and looting in the streets of Acre as if they were in Damascus! And you have nothing better to do than sit and drink?” The outrage in John’s voice rang to the vaulted ceiling and reverberated there.
The German noblemen at once drew their swords and shouted back at John, while behind him a general uproar erupted. The Archbishop of Acre, however, leaned back in his chair with an odd smile on his face, and the Imperial Chancellor gestured for silence, telling the noblemen to sheath their swords.
The level of noise dropped but did not fully die away. The Imperial Chancellor spoke into the lull, “It’s young John d’Ibelin, is it not?” He spoke in Latin.
“Yes, my lord,” John answered in the same tongue, because it was their only common language.
“And you presume to give orders to me? The Imperial Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire?” he asked with raised eyebrows.
“My sister the Queen,” John started deliberately. He was breathing heavily, but he had a grip on himself. He answered slowly and clearly, speaking so every man in the hall could hear him, “… is in grief and mourning. The Dowager Queen of Jerusalem, therefore, tasked me with restoring order. And that I will do, even if it means riding down and butchering your men,” John bluffed. “I would prefer, however, if you brought your men to order.”
Behind him he heard men muttering “Juden” and “Schweine,” but he ignored them and focused on the Imperial Chancellor. Hildesheim might be a bishop, but he was a worldly bishop—and one who knew how to wield a mace.
“What makes you so certain you can stop thousands of fighting men from obtaining what they believe is their just reward, young man?”
“My faith in God, my lord Bishop,” John answered as forcefully as he could, gulping air into his lungs to try to calm his racing pulse. “He knows that what your men do is an offense against His people—the people he was born to—and His Holy Gospel, for which He gave His sacred blood. Even now my men are calling out the watch. If you do not take action, we will.” John’s heart was pounding furiously in his breast. God help me! He pleaded silently. God help me!
“Is this not what I have been saying for the last hour?” the Archbishop of Acre spoke up, leaning forward and hissing to his fellow bishop: “You know it is the right thing to do.”
“My men won a great victory over the Saracens, and what have they got for it? Nothing. No loot. No gold. Nothing.”
“They have received the remission of sins past,” the Archbishop of Acre countered, “but not, I must stress, absolution for what they are doing now. The sins they are committing here in the Holy Land against innocent people will take them all to hell, regardless of what they did to al-Adil’s army!”
Hildesheim looked over at Acre with raised eyebrows for a moment, but then he pulled his feet under him and stood. He started distributing orders in German. The noblemen around him nodded, turned toward the hall, and started calling to their men. Abruptly all the men in the hall appeared to be scrambling to find their helmets and gauntlets. John felt himself quaking. If they were going to join their men in the looting, he—no, Acre—was utterly lost.
As if reading his mind, Hildesheim clapped him on the shoulder and remarked, “You win, boy. I’ve ordered my knights to rein in their men and move them out of Acre. We’ll set up camp outside the walls—and then look for a Saracen city to sack.”
John turned toward the Archbishop of Acre in amazement as Hildesheim swept past him, calling to someone to bring him his helmet and arms. He wasn’t yet sure if he should believe Hildesheim or not.
The Archbishop of Acre had once upon a time
been a priest at the Church of St. George in Lydda. He had known John’s uncle and father. He smiled at John with nearly paternal pride as he remarked, “Well done, young man. You are truly an Ibelin.”
Acre, Late September 1197
Ralph of Tiberius pounced on Balian before he had even dismounted. “Ibelin! Thank God you’ve made it.” He grabbed Balian’s bridle and held his horse for him as he dropped down onto the cobbles of the courtyard. Then in a low voice Ralph murmured, “Isabella must marry immediately! We need a king to take command of the Germans and confront al-Adil. We can’t afford to take her grief into account. Too much is at stake.”
Balian gave the young man a reproachful look and noted, “I’ve only just arrived, Tiberius. Let me at least speak to my wife and her daughter.”
A groom emerged to take his horse, and Balian turned over the reins. He stepped back to tell his squires to see to his baggage, and then started immediately up the steps. Tiberius, however, clung to his side and continued speaking in a low, urgent voice. “My lord, don’t mistake me as callous. I have the deepest sympathy for the Queen. No one would be gentler with her, yet more forceful with our enemies.”
Balian stopped in mid-stride to turn and stare at the young nobleman. “Did you just suggest what I think you did? That you would be a suitable consort for Queen Isabella?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’m a prince of Galilee,” Ralph answered.
“A land we lost in 1187,” Ibelin retorted briskly, before adding more wearily, “along with Ibelin and Ramla. I know. There’s no shame in being landless, but the Queen needs a consort who is—”
The Lord of Caesarea, coming down the stairs, recognized Balian just as he came abreast of him, and at once stopped to grab him by the elbow. “Ibelin! Thank God! We need to call the High Court together.”
“Of course,” Balian answered with a glance at Tiberius. “But first I wish to see my lady and my stepdaughter the Queen.”
Balian continued up the stairs, but Caesarea turned to flank him on his left, while Tiberius still clung to his right side. “Al-Adil has laid siege to Jaffa,” Caesarea reported, pacing himself to Balian.
“And the Germans damn near burned down the synagogue,” Ralph of Tiberius chimed in. “If your son John hadn’t put a sword up the Bishop of Hildesheim’s butt—”
“What?” Balian gasped, turning on Ralph in shock.
“Just a figure of speech, my lord,” Ralph excused himself. “The German troops were running riot, helping themselves to whatever they wanted—and not just in the Jewish quarter—while the German knights and barons sat around ignoring it all. John stormed in and somehow convinced them not only to intervene, but to move their troops outside the city.”
Balian was astonished—and very pleased.
“Jaffa’s the bigger problem,” Caesarea countered doggedly, with a frown at Tiberius. “Al-Adil still has some fifty thousand troops in the field, and the last we heard Barlais had sailed down to Jaffa with his wife and God knows what else, but certainly not troops. It was his pleas for help that forced Champagne to hire the Italian mercenaries. He was trying to address them from the balcony when it gave way under him.”
Ibelin frowned. Aimery’s selection of Barlais as the man to take control of Jaffa for the Lusignans had been dictated by the fact that Barlais had been Geoffrey’s man and seemed to feel he was entitled to act as the Lusignans’ lieutenant there. Aimery had also pointed out that Barlais had made more than enough enemies on Cyprus, and was better occupied elsewhere. Still, Balian wasn’t surprised to find he was no match for al-Adil. Barlais was a sergeant—no matter what title you dressed him up in.
“Can’t we send the Germans down to relieve Jaffa?” Ibelin asked Caesarea.
“Who are you suggesting should send them down?”
“The Queen.”
This answer produced dead silence. Ibelin looked from one man to the other, and they both shook their heads mutely while not meeting his eye. Not a good sign.
Before they could say another word, however, the Archbishop of Nazareth emerged out of a door they were passing. He caught sight of Ibelin and exclaimed, “Thank God you’re here, Ibelin! You need to summon the High Court at once! We have many urgent decisions to make! May I send out the summons?”
“Of course,” Ibelin answered, surprised no summons had been issued already.
The Archbishop turned as if to take immediate action, but then stopped himself and turned back to lecture Ibelin (rather pompously, Balian thought): “The Kingdom has rarely been in a more precarious situation, my lord. You have no idea how close we came to losing the battle to al-Adil—right here outside our very gates.” He gestured dramatically in the general direction of the Nazareth Gate. “The Germans would all have run away. It was the citizens of Acre, rallying to Champagne late in the day, who enabled us to hold their attacks and finally scatter them with a last charge.”
“The Chancellor speaks the truth,” Hugh of Tiberius spoke up hotly. He had come out of apparently nowhere to stand beside his brother. “The value of these German troops is far less than what we hoped.”
“They’re only good for terrorizing civilians!” his brother Ralph scoffed.
Ibelin looked from one to the other in dismay and then tried to continue, but now all three men kept pace with him, and he was next waylaid by the Lord of Arsur. “Ibelin! At last! We need to summon the High Court.”
“Yes, I just told the Chancellor to issue the summons,” Ibelin assured him, adding in a tone tinged with exasperation, “I expected the summons to go out before now.”
“On whose orders?” Arsur asked, astonished. “You are the Queen’s closest male relative. Or your son John, I suppose. . . .”
“No matter. It’s done now. Although it looks as if most of the tenants-in-chief are already here,” Ibelin noted with a nod to Pagan of Haifa, who had joined the crowd of men around him.
“Sidon hasn’t shown up, and Jaffa is now held by Lusignan. We’re also missing half the bishops,” Haifa at once joined the conversation.
“What about the rear-tenants?”
“I haven’t taken a count, but we could summon them to the Cathedral at noon tomorrow and see who shows up.”
Ibelin nodded again, still somewhat astonished to find all these men awaiting his orders. While it was true he was arguably the most senior baron in the Kingdom, he had not imagined that the others would be so passive in his absence. No doubt the unexpectedness of Champagne’s death had left them dazed and confused. No one had been prepared for a young king in the best of health to be suddenly taken from them.
He reached the entrance to the royal apartments. The heavy double doors were closed, and two sergeants stood in front of them, helmets partially hiding their faces behind wide nose guards. They stood with their legs apart and their hands on their hilts. They clearly had orders to admit no one and were determined to follow those orders.
Balian turned toward the door, and the men around him fell back respectfully.
“I’m Balian d’Ibelin,” Balian told the guards simply. He did not even raise his voice.
The guards reacted smartly and promptly. One turned and opened the door, shoving it open and then stepping back and aside to allow Ibelin to pass. The other remained alertly in place, eyeing the men who had swarmed around Ibelin, ready to block them if they tried to follow. None of them did.
Balian stepped into the royal anteroom, and the door clunked shut behind him. The anteroom of the Queen’s apartment was familiar. He had spent many hours there during the English King’s sojourn in the Holy Land. The Plantagenet had housed his bride and sister in this palace, and Maria Zoë had spent a great deal of time with both ladies; he had often waited for her here. Then it had been bustling and cramped; now it was abandoned and empty. Carpets had been spread over the marble floors to dampen sounds, and tapestries had been hung on the walls for presumably the same reason. They were dark tapestries whose motifs he did not readily grasp, yet all were concerned
with death, darkness, and grief.
He advanced through this room to the next, a private solar in which the Queen and her ladies usually read, spun, sewed, and conversed in privacy. It was a domain from which most men were prohibited. Again, it had been spread with carpets and hung with tapestries, making the room stuffy and hot. But here a sudden flutter of motion near the empty fireplace drew his attention.
“Papa!” Meg exclaimed as she jumped up, tossing her book aside to run to him. She was dressed all in black with black ribbons in her hair. “I’m so glad you’ve come!” she told him as she threw her arms around him. Then without taking a breath, she pulled him toward a marble bench they could sit on side by side. “It’s been absolutely terrible!” Meg announced. “Isabella tried to kill herself before we arrived. Her ladies found her before she could bleed to death and bound up her wrists, but she’d barely recovered from that when she took a double dose of sleeping medicine—she says by accident, but Mother doesn’t believe it—and she threw up all night long! Now she’s refusing to eat, saying she can’t face it, that she’ll throw it all up. She’s lost ten pounds at least, and she looks terrible!” Meg concluded.
“Looks are not all that matters, Dove,” Balian reminded his younger daughter.
Meg rolled her eyes. “I know that!” she protested. Taking a deep breath, she met her father’s eyes and declared forcefully, “… but they say something about us, too. Isabella is naturally beautiful; if she looks terrible, it’s a reflection of the state of her soul.”
“Hmm,” Balian answered, impressed despite himself, but unprepared to admit that to his fifteen-year-old daughter. “So where are your mother and brother now?”
“I’m not sure where John is. He’s been very busy. The very day we arrived, the Germans were rioting and looting down in the lower town. John tracked down the Bishop of Hildesheim and shamed him into taking action. I wish I’d been there! The Archbishop of Acre came to tell Mama all about it, praising John to the heavens, but John said he was quaking in his boots because he was bluffing about being able to ride the Germans down with his—meaning your—men. Meanwhile, Sir Galvin had roused the garrison watch, and Sir Sergios had fetched Andersen and his crew—who were spoiling for a fight, of course. Together with the Norsemen, they already had the Germans on the run even before Hildesheim and the German barons arrived.”
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