by Tuvia Fogel
Yehezkel looked embarrassed. No one had ever asked him for his blessing before. He was about to say something self-denigrating, but Francesco grabbed his right hand in both of his and pressed it on his head. Unable to decline, Yehezkel pronounced the Priestly Blessing.
The friars walked out of the camp, surrounded by the mamluk escort. Yehezkel and Galatea watched Francesco’s tiny, frail figure, his back a bit rounded, one shoulder slightly higher than the other, sudden shivers of fever shaking him as if he were ruffled by an invisible hand.
CHAPTER 22
PRU U’REVU
Be Fruitful and Multiply
ACRE, 15TH AUGUST 1219
“Frutolf, these women are your wards,” said Bois-Guilbert as soon as the passengers disembarked on the quay in Acre. “I advise you to accompany them to the Benedictine convent of Saint Anne’s.” Then he turned to Rustico and Garietto. “As for you two, find yourselves a hostel for pilgrims, they’re everywhere!”
The Templar galleys left Limassol a week after the one headed back to Damietta. Flying on the water at eight knots, they made the passage to Acre in just twenty hours and after passing under the Tower of Flies on the end of the breakwater waited for the massive chain between outer and inner harbors to be lowered and then entered the port of what had become the new capital of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem—at least until a Hero of the Cross reconquered the Holy City.
Bois-Guilbert convened the knights of the other orders to a rendezvous the next day and marched off with the Templars, their sergeants, and squires into the passage leading to the order’s castle. The tunnel was a new addition to Templar possessions in the city. Four hundred yards long, domed and heavily guarded, it passed under the Pisan quarter and connected the port with their castle in the southwestern corner of the city. The Templars would have loved their own harbor in Acre, but steep castle walls rising from the sea confer a strong military advantage, and one just doesn’t build landing quays at their feet.
St. John d’Acre—or Acre, as everyone called it—capitulated to Salah ad-Din without a fight after the sultan’s victory at Hattin and his capture of Jerusalem. But it had only been in Saracen hands for two years when King Guy of Lusignan besieged it, first with the help of the Italians and later the kings of France and England.
The siege of Acre was unique, with Saracen troops besieging the Frankish besiegers. One year after the kings retook Acre, every institution in Jerusalem, from the royal palace to the headquarters of the military orders to churches and monasteries, relocated there, bringing the city’s population from twenty thousand souls to nearly fifty thousand almost overnight.
Luckily for the Latins, trade in merchandise from the silk road continued to fill Acre’s coffers and enabled the construction of sorely needed new buildings. Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans had their own quarters in the city, each with a marketplace, warehouses, baths, a bakery, shops, and dwellings. Acre became intolerably crowded, and tensions between the Italian communities grew. Everyone knew that at any moment the frequent brawls could turn into urban warfare.
But chaotic and violent as it was, life in Acre, amid the pageants of marriages and coronations of Latin nobility, had gone on unperturbed until two years earlier, when, for the first time in thirty years, Christian kings started arriving to retake Jerusalem. A year earlier, the Frisian and Burgundian fleets had arrived with their thousands, and mayhem and confusion in Acre was complete.
Adding to the dangers was a gruesome recurring event, almost peculiar to Acre: assassinations by the Hashashin. These were a heretical offshoot of a Shiite sect, the Ismailis, devoted to their sheikh to the point of instant, unprepared martyrdom. Their name was said to derive from the hashish they ate before going on a mission. The sheikh of fifty years earlier, Rashid ad-Din Sinan, became famous as the Old Man of the Mountain by giving unpredictable orders from his fortress in Syria, which resulted in the death of many important players in Outremer, both Christian and Saracen.
Rumors were rife in Acre that the masters of the Temple secretly met the sheikhs of the Hashashin to determine which leaders had to be eliminated, and these were often Saracens, since in Outremer it was not uncommon for warriors to dispatch their brothers in Islam, too, if their understanding of the prophet’s plan differed from their own and, above all, if the price was right.
Gudrun and Albacara were warmly welcomed at Saint Anne’s. Unarmed pilgrims could still travel to Jerusalem, and the convent had become an important way station for the women among them. Their first concern was to entrust the big trunk with the Ardenga blazon, with Rustico and Garietto’s help, to a warehouse in the Pisan quarter. After a week without her, both women had nearly overcome their physical need for Galatea’s presence, which had different roots, but resulted for both in the same paralyzing fear of every horse, knight, or sword—not to speak of the occasional Saracen—they crossed in Acre’s alleys.
On the Day of the Virgin’s Assumption, choirs blaring from dozens of churches, the women emerged from hearing Mass in Saint Peter’s, the main church in the Pisan commune, and were making their way back to Saint Anne’s. Despite its being the middle of the day on a crowded street, two Hashashin waited for them in a doorway and when they walked past pulled them inside and gagged them before anyone in the street noticed they were no longer walking along.
The women at once feared for their lives. They were so shocked they needed no subduing and were pushed, gags in their mouths and wrists held roughly behind their backs, down a dark corridor. A glimpse of the Saracen features of their captors confirmed that their time had come to give up their souls. Shaking with panicked sobs, they reached a dingy room where they were thrown on a bundle of hay in a corner and locked up with no explanations.
ACRE, 22ND AUGUST 1219
Bois-Guilbert didn’t believe for a moment that the Jew couldn’t have used his connections in Cyprus to avoid being drafted, or that the crazy friar was the real reason the abbess chose to go to Damietta. They had wanted to go to Egypt! Domingo warned him about that Jew, and he was ready to burn in hell if those two weren’t after the parchment!
After mastering his jealousy and crippling desire for revenge on the Jew, he’d reasoned more coldly, and it came to him. The two women would tell him why the perverts went to Egypt!
“The Hashashin kidnapping a German nun and a Venetian widow in the streets of Acre will go almost unnoticed,” he’d thought. “Sure, the oaf Frutolf will raise hell, having sworn to protect them, but once I have the information I want, I’ll free them myself! He, he! Brilliant!”
He found himself, as always, diabolically clever. He’d meant for the women to stew in their terror for a few days but hadn’t counted on Garietto being in love. Albacara and Rustico agreed in Limassol to provide a cover for the two youngsters, who could not be seen alone. That day Garietto arranged for all four to meet at ninth hour near the building site by the seawall where Saint Andrew’s, which would be the biggest church in Acre, was being raised.
After waiting an hour, Garietto and Rustico, their scant weapons as visible as they could make them, walked to Saint Anne’s to inquire after the women. They were told the two had not returned from Mass and after a frantic exchange in their lagoon dialect decided to look for the Teutonic knight who gave his word to Master Ezekiel that he would protect the women.
On hearing of the disappearance of his wards, Frutolf made his way to the Templar keep to speak with Bois-Guilbert. His master told him not to answer his brothers’ questions on his assignment with the Templar, which made him feel important at the time, but now he had to speak with Bois-Guilbert, and the fact that he couldn’t enter the Templar castle was one more instance of the humiliations he had not foreseen when he’d obediently accepted the mission. When Bois-Guilbert finally came out to see him, Frutolf told him with a certain urgency in his voice that the women had disappeared.
“The Venetian armigers of the countess are questioning everyone who was at the Mass in Saint Peter’s. Soon they will go t
o the Venetian authorities and report them missing . . . or worse.”
“Pipe down, Frutolf,” said the Englishman condescendingly. “I had the Hashashin kidnap the women because I need to find out what the Jew and the abbess spoke about.”
Frutolf was aghast. “You knew they were my wards and had them kidnapped?”
“You’re an ingrate, Frutolf!” shouted Bois-Guilbert, turning the tables on the German. “I could have tortured them myself! If I had the Hashashin use their potions on them instead, it was so that you wouldn’t break your pledge to the Jew . . . as if one had to keep promises made to servants of Satan!” He spat on the ground, looking even more outraged than Frutolf was.
“Now they’ll tell her my protection was worth nothing . . .” mumbled the German, distraught.
“Aha! So she’s the one that worries you, my poor besotted knight! Well, I can’t blame you; the damsel is worthy of sleepless nights. But let me tell you, Frutolf: if I were to put a girl in your bed tonight—tall, shapely, and with long black hair—and tell you it was the Tuscan countess of your dreams, you wouldn’t know the difference.”
Frutolf was silent and then whispered, “Get what you want out of them, and then let them go. Understood?”
Bois-Guilbert smiled, thinking he would have to ask Master Pedro for a different partner.
The first day they’d been given nothing but bread and water, but their hands had not been tied, so as soon as they’d been thrown into the makeshift prison, they’d removed the gags from their mouths and started moaning in high-pitched, broken voices.
“Why not kill us outright?” sobbed Albacara. “They did so to enough Christians on Candia!”
“They must want something from us,” Gudrun said, unusually lucid. “Remember the ‘parchment’ Mother Galatea and the Jew kept speaking of? That’s probably what they’re after.”
“By the Holy Blood of the Virgin!” the widow cried. “Do you think they’ll torture us?”
“I don’t know. But when the mother told me we were going to Jerusalem, she said martyrdom at the hands of infidels could not be ruled out.” They embraced each other, weeping in the darkness.
The next day, a bowl of meat with a thick sauce made them hope that someone was concerned about their well-being. They could never have imagined that the reason for the lamb stew was that the resin, which the Hashashin obtained by pressing the pollen of hemp flowers, was harder to hide inside bread.
The effects of the hashish on them were like an evil spell. At first, their heads swam, and they tripped when trying to stand up. Then their captors’ laughter echoing behind the door sunk them into terror-filled fantasies in which defilement preceded death. At one point, Gudrun worked her lips, straining to form a word, but ended up blowing uselessly in Albacara’s face. She started crying silently.
Still later, a little less anxious, Gudrun slid into more agreeable fantasies: Garietto freed them, sword in hand, and they accomplished their pilgrimage in Jerusalem. Even before being fed the resin, Gudrun possessed enough imagination for three young nuns, so in her incredibly vivid vision, back in Venice, their pilgrimage was followed by annulment of her vows, marriage, and a flock of blond children.
Just then, they heard the lock slide, and in the dim light from the doorway they made out Brother Bois-Guilbert entering the cell. Behind him was Frutolf, who insisted on being present when the women regained their freedom. Despite slurred speech, Albacara exclaimed, “Praise be to the Virgin! I knew the Mother of God would not abandon us. Thank you, Sweet Mary!” Gudrun was crossing herself over and over.
“You’re lucky I have friends in the Saracen order that kidnapped you, my ladies!” began Bois-Guilbert, setting his trap.
“Why on earth would they kidnap us?” asked Gudrun, already standing up and straightening her habit, certain that the knights would now lead them out.
“Ehm . . . I’m afraid I’ve not yet obtained your release, Sister,” said Bois-Guilbert. “The Hashashin want information about the Jew who charmed your abbess into submitting to his plan, and they won’t let you go until you give it to them.”
“I knew it!” cried the widow. “I always knew Mother Galatea was too trusting of that Christ killer!”
It was how Bois-Guilbert had hoped they would react. He saw Gudrun hesitate, uncertain whether to believe his words, but before the girl could say anything to the older woman, Albacara gushed, “You were right, Gudrun, it’s the parchment they talked about with Don Sancio!”
“Who is this Don Sancio?” asked Bois-Guilbert immediately.
“Don Sancio de la Palmela,” said Gudrun.
“They met the old master’s secretary?” asked the Templar, incredulous. “Where? When?”
“He died in my house,” said Albacara. “A week after the beaching of the cog.”
“God knows what he told them,” mumbled Bois-Guilbert. “Father Domingo must hear of this.”
Gudrun heard the name but said nothing, increasingly sure that the Templar was not to be trusted.
“They want to know why the Jewish wizard and his captive abbess went to Egypt,” said Bois-Guilbert with a new urgency. “Just tell them that, and we’re all out of here!”
Gudrun wondered, “And who told these Saracens that Mother Galatea and the Jew went to Egypt?”
Albacara was quick to take the bait. “It’s a letter! A monk in Cyprus told them there was a letter in a synagogue in Fustat. They wanted to see it badly; that’s why they joined the friar.”
Bois-Guilbert was exultant but tried not to show it. He’d been right, as usual! He’d found a lead that would make Father Domingo jump for joy; he just had to find a trusted messenger to deliver the news.
“Did they say anything about the letter? Who wrote it, or to whom?” he pressed the widow.
“Those are his questions, not the kidnappers’!” thought Gudrun. “No,” she interjected, deciding to stop Albacara from spilling any more beans. “I heard them speak of the letter, but they never said who wrote it.”
“But the letter was about the parchment they were looking for, was it not?” said Bois-Guilbert.
“Yes, yes,” said the widow. “They said they would take it to Jerusalem and show it to the Old Man.”
Bois-Guilbert blanched. “Almighty God, the Jew knows of the Old Man!” he thought, horrified. “Now we really are behind in this race!” His head spun with the implications of the Jew’s reaching Syria and meeting with Domingo’s archenemy, the chaplain of Château Pèlerin.
In any case, he’d found out enough. He’d meant to release the women after questioning them, in case the German lost control altogether. Despite the success of his scheme, he decided to punish Garietto for interfering by reporting the women’s disappearance to Frutolf. The next day he summoned both armigers and gave them summary notice that they were on the list of people being recruited from Acre for the final assault on Damietta.
Garietto and Gudrun were devastated by the news. Bois-Guilbert had promised Galatea he wouldn’t draft the women’s escort, but the man clearly had no honor, and Gudrun prevailed on the widow to seek refuge in the Venetian commune and sever all contacts with the knight.
Early in September—too late, God being merciful, to take part in the disastrous attack on the sultan’s camp—Garietto and Rustico embarked for the war. Gudrun and Garietto said their adieus on the quay. She took out a small silk bag that had lain hidden in Galatea’s trunk and closed his hand around it.
“Take this, Garietto. It’s a real relic my grandfather brought from Jerusalem. Woven into the bag is a thread from the Virgin’s tunic! Wear it close to your heart; it will protect you from every blow in battle.”
The big blonde started to weep. “I’ll take the bag, my beloved,” murmured Garietto. “But most of all, I’ll take these tears with me . . .”
CHTEAU PÉLERIN, ATHLIT, 12TH SEPTEMBER 1219
On a spur of rock jutting into the sea, separated from the shore by a wide moat, Château Pélerin was the strongest fo
rtress the Temple had ever possessed in Outremer. Fifteen leagues southwest of Acre, it was completed just one year earlier, and many halls inside its walls were still unfinished.
A ditch, eighty feet wide and twenty feet deep, was dug across the base of the promontory in such a way that the sea could be made to flood it from either end. Behind the moat, the castle was defended by a wall with three-hundred-foot square towers, one in the middle and one at each end. But its real strength lay in its own small port, which enabled it to receive supplies under siege.
On that September day, Arnald Arifat approached the fortress from the south. Despite the master of Provence effortlessly exposing him as an agent of the Cathar church, he’d decided to contact the Old Man anyway. After the treaty between Salah ad-Din and Coeur de Lion, the coastal strip from Ascalon to Tyre was all that was left of the Latin Kingdom, but it had still been a risk for him to leave his squire in Ascalon and ride sixty leagues northward alone. He’d waited a long time for that meeting and didn’t want anyone to know he would see the Old Man—nor, God forbid, ask questions about it.
Slowing his mount, he rose in the stirrups and gazed at the waves crashing on the breakwater that sheltered the little harbor. A beauséant*51 flapping in the wind above the near tower reminded him that he’d been wearing a Templar cross for four months. “I don’t regret that decision,” he thought with a smile. “Mostly because I wasn’t subjected to the stricture of monkish life I feared most: abstinence!”
The two knights guarding the descent into the dry moat greeted him as he rode past, and soon he was entering the gate at the foot of the southern tower. He took his horse to the stables and then went to look for the Commander of the House to inquire about the chaplain’s whereabouts.
He was told the Old Man was supervising the laying of foundations of the small round chapel that would soon go up in the keep. Arnald found him in a shed next to the hole over a hundred feet across that five workers were digging on the southern edge of the vast courtyard. Arnald peered at the figure in the semidarkness. He recognized the cleric to whom he’d given the Parchment of Circles ten years earlier, but only just. The Old Man now looked like life had been breathed into his corpse just before it could begin to seriously rot. Folds of ashen, shriveled skin hung from his skull, but the look of mild amusement in his eyes made him unmistakably the same man. Then the cadaver spoke.
