“This is the lake of Jesus,” Volkmar explained, as his son gazed down upon the water on which the Lord had walked. “To the north is Capharnaum, where we shall travel later. The city with the castle is Tabarie. Years ago it belonged to your uncle’s family, but now it’s Mameluke.” And the men rested their horses for a long time, surveying the incomparable scene which for so many years had been denied them because of Turkish conquest.
Young Volkmar was eager to ride down to Tabarie, for the walled city was inviting, but his father indicated that they must postpone that visit for a while and ride to the north in the direction of a strange hill composed of two projections. “The Horns of Hattin,” the count said, “and I would our house had never heard the name.” His knights crossed themselves, for of the twelve men riding that day from Ma Coeur, each had lost an ancestor at the great battle and some, like Volkmar, had lost four: great-great-uncles and great-great-grandfathers and men who, had they lived, might have held the kingdom together.
“It was in July, 1187, more than a hundred years ago,” Volkmar explained. “Saladin was in Tabarie with all the water and wall he needed. At Ma Coeur were the king and the greatest knights of the day, and in our hall the argument began. What would you have done, Volkmar? You’re safe inside your castle. You have thousands of strong men and more than enough armor. You have water at hand and food. To defeat you, Saladin must leave his walls and his water, march up this hill, come far across the plains we’ve just traveled and then try to fight you in your own castle. What would you do?”
“I’d get lots of food inside the walls and wait,” the boy answered.
“Great God!” the count cried, smiting his mailed chest. “A child understands. But what did the fools around the king propose? That we leave our tight castles. That we leave our water supplies and our food, and that in the middle of summer we put on our coats of mail and march here to fight Saladin on ground of his own choosing.”
“That’s what we did,” one of the knights muttered, surveying the improbable battlefield.
“The men of Volkmar pleaded against the folly,” the count recalled. “Our grand hall echoed with their arguments, but after they had explained how easy it would be for Saladin if we left our castle and fought him here at Hattin, Reynald of Châtillon …” The Count of Ma Coeur looked away and muttered, “May God damn his infamous soul. May God curse him afresh in hell.” He took his son’s hands and said gently, “Next morning when Volkmar IV and his son rode to battle they told their wives that they would not be coming back.” The gloomy descendants of that day looked at the Horns and were mute.
“Did they fight here?” the boy asked, for he had grown to like the gently falling field, with its protecting Horns and fine view of the lake below.
“I suppose you’d call it a fight. Twenty thousand Crusaders left Ma Coeur on July 3, the hottest day of the year, and in full armor—much heavier than we wear today—marched without finding water to this spot, where Saladin had more than a hundred thousand men waiting. We had one thousand horsemen. He had twenty thousand. On the final night before the battle our men were dying of thirst … there was a well over there, but they didn’t find it … the moon shone on the lake and they could see the water. It sent them mad, and Saladin knew it, so he set those fields on fire and sparks and smoke blew across our people, and at dawn he began to tighten the net. It was the worst battle that men have ever fought in this land. Cruel … cruel.”
“Why did our side do such a thing?” the boy inquired.
“Because it was the turn of stupid men to lead us,” Volkmar replied. “We lost Tabarie and the Galilee and Jerusalem and Ma Coeur, and even St. Jean d’Acre.” He turned away from the others and stared at the hills. “We lost so much,” he muttered to himself. “Later on we won back Ma Coeur and Acre but Jerusalem was gone forever, and now the twilight deepens.” He began to hum a chant from the Catholic liturgy Tenebrae factae sunt, “The shadows are falling.”
Behind him he heard the knights explaining to his son, “Count Volkmar broke through the ring of iron and died leading his men toward the lake. They reached here,” and the men showed young Volkmar where his ancestor had fallen.
“Was his son with him?” the boy inquired.
“Of course,” the knights answered, “Volkmars always seek the enemy,” and the company saddled again and resumed their march to Tabarie, where the Mameluke guards were astonished to see them riding like ghosts out of the hills in which their ancestors had perished, so that an alarm was sounded and the governor himself, a Mameluke with fierce mustaches, left the fort and came to the gate, where he inspected the order from Damascus and allowed the pilgrims entrance.
It was an inviting little city they had come to, close-walled on three sides and with the lake on the fourth. Since Galilee stood far below sea level the air was heavy and hot, but the cool breeze from the lake was welcome and the food was excellent. The Arabs who inhabited the town—there were not more than six Mamelukes and a hundred Turks—were hospitable, and all were eager to hear news of Acre and Nazareth.
The warriors laid aside their armor and lounged in comfortable chairs beside the lake, drinking beverages which the garrison supplied, after which the Mameluke governor, pressing down his mustaches, proposed that all go down the road to the hot baths which had made the city famous in Roman days, and for the first time young Volkmar saw springs gushing from the ground bringing water far too hot to touch. The dusty men indulged themselves in the humid rooms and felt the tedium of the saddle seep away in the heat. Then they dressed and rode back to the city, Count Volkmar experiencing pangs of regret when he thought: Once it was ours. Once a prince lived here and gathered fees from lands ten miles away. To come to Tabarie in winter and take the baths, that was the best that Galilee offered.
He thanked the Mameluke officer for his courtesy and the former slave bowed, and as he did so Volkmar cried to his son, “Look! Look! There’s a Jew.” And for the first time in his life the boy saw a Jew.
“A few returned from the lands of the Frank,” the Mameluke explained, studying the stranger as if he were a new kind of horse, useful but not customary.
Young Volkmar stood fascinated as the strange man walked slowly through the streets, bearded, cap on head, shuffling a little, looking for something or somebody. The Mameluke called out to him in Arabic, and the man came over to the knights. His Arabic was not good, but he was able to explain that he had come from France.
“Why?” the mustachioed governor asked.
“Because this city is holy to the Jews,” the man replied.
“Why?” Volkmar inquired.
“Because the Bible was written down in this city and because the Jerusalem Talmud was, too.”
“What’s the Talmud?” the knights asked.
“The Jewish book of law,” the man explained, and he was allowed to walk on.
For a perverse reason Volkmar was pleased that his son had finally seen a Jew, for none had stopped in Ma Coeur for two hundred years, yet when the boy grew older and read the chronicles he would surely come upon that cryptic passage that had caused the Volkmars so much irritation. An unknown priest had put his suspicions into writing, nearly two hundred years before:
And after a while men reasoned thus: On her deathbed the Countess Volkmar said only that the religion of Christ and the religion of Muhammad were folly, and in the great halls the rumor circulated that this was because she was herself Jewish, in a secret way, and it was recalled that often friends had asked her, “Why do you not drop your name Taleb and take a Christian name?” and she had oft replied, “Because I was born Taleb and it would be foolish to change.” And then others remembered that her father, known as Luke—for he did take a Christian name—had borne all the signs of a true Jew. He was good in medicine. He ate no fat of the meat. He could read and write. He knew mysterious matters. And he was unusually skilled in handling money, which he did for Count Volkmar so long as the count lived, then for Sir Gunter. And the suspicio
n grew and it was for this reason that some of the great houses like Antioch and Jerusalem refused to marry with the Volkmars, but others, seeing how the principality prospered, above all others, were in great speed to ally themselves with it.
Count Volkmar laughed at the old tale and recalled “the great houses” which had refused to intermarry with his ancestors. “Where are they now?” he asked. “They vanished so long ago.” Then he chuckled. “Taleb is about as perfect an Arab name as you can find. She wasn’t Jewish. She was stubborn, and would to God her descendants had been more stubborn that night when they allowed the idiots to argue them into fighting at the Horns of Hattin.” He shook his head as if loose things—ideas, memories—were floating therein, unconnected, and then he fell back in his chair and stared at the lake.
From Tabarie the pilgrims rode north to Capharnaum, a lovely deserted spot where rich fields drifted down to the water and where Jesus Christ had fed the multitudes by hundreds and by fifties, with only five loaves of bread and two small fishes: “And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men.”
“Could it have happened?” the boy asked.
Volkmar looked at his son in astonishment. “Of course!” he said. “If you had caught a fish from the lake you’d have seen that it was only half a fish, swimming around with a piece bitten out. It was thrown back into the lake by Jesus after the fragments were collected. Of course these things happen. That’s why we come on pilgrimages.”
The boy studied Capharnaum with new interest, whereupon his father explained, “The five thousand men were seated here. The two fish were carried in a basket up that path. And Jesus stood exactly where the altar of that ruined church used to be. When I was a boy you could see on the floor of the church a picture of the fish,” and he led the knights into the ruined sanctuary and rummaged about the rubble until he found the mosaic which once had been kept polished by priests of Byzantium; and the two stone fish were as real to him as the living flowers of the fields outside. Here Jesus had stood. Here He had fed the five thousand with the two fish represented in the panel.
“This is why our land is called holy,” he said quietly, and the knights resumed their climb into the steep hills until they came at last to the mountain village of Saphet, where they were to meet Muzaffar coming his own way from Damascus.
This was the most painful moment of the trip, more so even than the silent Horns of Hattin, for that battle had occurred a century before, whereas the loss of Saphet was still a gaping wound in Crusader memory, and after the knights had presented their safe-conduct to the Mameluke garrison they passed into the courtyard of what once had been a notable Christian castle. High on a hill, with precipitous falls on each side, the soaring castle of Saphet had been a beacon to the surrounding countryside. From its battlements one could see the Sea of Galilee far below, and the plains of the north. It commanded the road from Damascus to Acre and dominated a dozen lesser passes. When the signal fires on its highest turrets were lighted they were seen on the seacoast, and Acre could be assured that all was well along the eastern marches. It was the hilltop castle par excellence, and in 1266 one of the real tragedies of the Crusades had occurred here—one that still struck terror in the European heart.
The first Mameluke sultan had laid siege to Saphet, and after a brilliant initial resistance the defenders were driven to realize that the winds of history had changed and that they would no longer be able to hold such outposts. Gallantly they offered to surrender so that no more lives need be lost, and terms were faithfully agreed upon: open the gates and each man would receive safe-conduct to Acre. The Mameluke sultan gave his binding oath, and the long siege ended. But not according to the pact. As soon as the sultan was within the gates his men pinioned the defenders and every knight was beheaded on the spot. “We wanted them to know the kind of enemy they faced,” one of the Mameluke generals explained, and thus the war of extermination was launched.
Now Saphet was a ghost town. The lovely settlement that had once clung to the flanks of the hill, outside the fortress walls, had been erased by the Mameluke attackers and had not yet been rebuilt, so that the fortress stood alone, its massive walls beginning to crumble. “We’ll pull them down one of these days,” the officer-in-charge stated. He seemed a likable person, not one given to beheading prisoners. His head was shaven and bore a deep scar at which young Volkmar stared. He ordered refreshments to be served on the battlements, where cool breezes drifted across the mountains.
“It’s a marvelous spot,” one of the garrison said in Arabic as he pointed to a village that nestled below on the flank of a hill. “I often wonder about that village. In all the wars that have been fought over Saphet I suppose it’s never been touched. But up here … battles … bugles … beheadings.” He looked directly at Volkmar as if he regretted the facts of history.
Crusaders and Mamelukes enjoyed two fine days at Saphet. Archery contests were held, with the Mamelukes winning by a consistent margin, but in sword play the Crusaders prevailed. “That’s how I got my scar,” the Mameluke officer explained to the boy. “One of your swords at Tyr.” Horse races were arranged within the castle walls, and here the smaller Turkish mounts had such advantage that the Crusaders could scarcely keep up on their lumbering beasts. “But on a long march to be followed immediately by a battle,” Volkmar said, “our horses are better every time.”
The baldheaded Mameluke replied, “For your tactics, yes. For the quick dash and retreat of our warfare, your horses would be too heavy to handle.” The men traded a big horse for one of the swift Turkish animals, and young Volkmar was given the beast to ride back to Ma Coeur.
Then the Mameluke captain asked a most bold question: “How long do you suppose the sultan will allow your fortress and Acre to exist?”
Volkmar scratched his clean-shaven chin and said slowly, “The truce agreed upon last year runs beyond the end of the century. I would suppose …”
“Do you think a truce can be observed that long?” the Mameluke persisted.
“Yes, I rather do. After all, both you and we gain real advantage from having Acre available to ships …”
“Agreed!” the Mameluke replied whole-heartedly. “You and I know that we ought to prolong the truce. Between us there’s no trouble. But we’ve been told by the Genoese … I heard it myself in Cairo from a sea captain’s lips … Your Pope is preaching a new Crusade.”
“Yes,” Volkmar said disgustedly. “Back there they don’t understand …”
“And if ten shiploads of knights eager for battle …”
The two leaders looked glumly down at the waters of Galilee, now red, now green, and a younger Mameluke broke the silence by observing, “I doubt the truce can last ten years.”
“I doubt it, too,” Volkmar concurred gloomily.
In the morning the old castle sounded as it must have in days past, for men were shouting on the battlements, and all came out to see the first camels of Muzaffar’s caravan picking their way along the mountain road. There was cheering, for his arrival meant that the garrison would have fresh food, and the gates were thrown open to admit the seventy-odd beasts and their armed attendants. True to his word Muzaffar appeared on a fine horse, from which he dismounted as if he were a young man. Moving easily across the stones in his long robes he saluted the garrison commander, then embraced Volkmar and kissed his son.
He had a dozen bits of news. He, too, had heard that a new Crusade was being preached in Europe. “Will they never learn?” he expostulated. “Seriously, this may be the last trip I’ll dare to risk. And when you see all the goods in Damascus waiting to be traded and all the things that the Genoese ships are bringing to Acre …” He spat into the wind. “We’re all fools.”
The baldheaded Mameluke wanted the old trader to stay with them for several days, for he was like a troubadour, filled with gossip, but he refused: “I’ve got to get the ca
mels to Acre.” Then he suggested, “But I could do this. If you’ll send a guard as far as Ma Coeur, I’ll send the camels off now and I’ll stay here overnight and we can ride to Starkenberg in the morning.”
It was agreed, and two young Mamelukes who wanted to see Ma Coeur were dispatched with the caravan while its owner relaxed on the sunny terrace, chatting about the rumors of empire. “What we can’t understand in Damascus,” the old man remarked, “is why the Pope should cry for a Crusade from Europe when he has a perfectly good one alive right here in Asia and does nothing to support it.”
“You mean the Mongols?” the Mameluke captain asked.
“Yes!” the old Arab insisted. “The other day I was talking with a Mongol trader down from Aleppo. He says the whole swarm of them are ready to become Christians if the Pope says the word, and they’d be an army of hundreds of thousands smashing at you Mamelukes from the back door while the Europeans hammer at the seaports. They’d have you caught in a trap.” He squeezed his wrinkled hands together with force.
“We used to worry about that,” the Mameluke confessed, rubbing his scar. “For years we wondered when the Mongols and the Christians would combine against us. But now we don’t worry. It can never happen.”
“Why not?” the old man asked.
“It’s difficult to explain,” the Mameluke answered. “Look how the Turks let us steal their empire. We were one man in ten thousand and slaves at that. At any point they could have stamped us out, but now we own the world. I suppose you’ve heard that Tripoli has fallen.”
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