by Glen Craney
Jourdaine forced Esclarmonde to her feet. “Don’t be long. She’s not to be left out of your sight.”
Esclarmonde put up a struggle, but the Abbess managed to drag her to the rear of the church and down a winding stairwell into the crypt. In a small warming room, three veiled nuns waited to conduct the examination. “You have twenty minutes.” The Abbess departed and locked the door behind her.
Esclarmonde clawed away the reaching hands and was stopped short by sounds of weeping. The Marquessa threw off her habit and rushed to hug her goddaughter. Corba and Phillipa dropped their disguises and joined in the embrace. They caught Esclarmonde before she fell from the shock.
“Child, what has this man done to you?” asked the Marquessa.
Esclarmonde heaved with sobs. “It is bearable.”
“We must report this to Roger!” insisted Corba.
“No!” begged Esclarmonde. “I have caused him enough trouble.”
“You have brought him his greatest joy,” said the Marquessa.
“He is that relieved to have me gone?”
The Marquessa placed Esclarmonde’s hand on Phillipa’s distended stomach. Esclarmonde felt a kick and looked at the women in confusion.
“Roger and I were married,” revealed Phillipa with a puckish grin. “We’ve tried to send news, but Jourdaine intercepts our couriers.”
Stunned, Esclarmonde turned to her godmother for confirmation. “Under our noses, she was winning his heart! And not a peep!”
“She has nearly tamed him,” said the Marquessa with pride.
“But what about your religion?” asked Esclarmonde.
“Roger allows me to pray to the God of my choice,” said Phillipa. “And I have agreed to refrain from advising him on politics.”
Thrilled, Esclarmonde hugged Phillipa. “I’m to be an aunt!”
“That’s not quite true.” With a twinkling eye, Corba opened a door to an anteroom. A wet nurse walked out and placed a swaddled infant into Esclarmonde’s arms. Corba watched with mischievous glee as Esclarmonde tried to make sense of this new arrival. Finally, Corba revealed, “You are an aunt. Or at least the honorific aunt of your godmother’s granddaughter.”
“She has your chin!” exclaimed Esclarmonde.
“I pray she takes after her grandmother in looks,” said Corba. “Neither Raymond nor I have much to offer in that regard.”
“Nonsense,” said Esclarmonde. “What is her name?”
“On that matter,” said Corba, “we require your arbitration.”
“We both wish to name our child after you,” said Phillipa. “If mine is a girl.”
“Your brother’s heir is entitled to the name,” said Corba. “But watch.” When she spoke Esclarmonde’s name, the infant flailed its tiny hands in excitement.
Phillipa agreed, “You must decide.”
Esclarmonde was brought to tears. Yet she could not bear the thought of disappointing one of them. “You cannot force such a choice on me.”
The Abbess cracked open the door. “The priest is dispensing the Eucharist.”
Bereft of any other means of making the decision, Esclarmonde rested one hand on Phillipa’s womb and the other on the head of Corba’s child. She spoke her name aloud. Phillipa’s baby kicked and Corba’s baby pumped her hands. She knew intuitively that Phillipa carried a girl. Mulling the dilemma, she kissed Phillipa’s womb and announced her judgment. “I name this child Esclarmonde Loupe, the ‘She-Wolf,’ for she kicks and fights like her father.”
Too moved to speak, Phillipa hugged Esclarmonde in gratitude.
Esclarmonde took Corba’s infant into her arms again. When the candle’s heat came near its pink cheeks, the babe playfully waved its arms and legs. She knew it to be a divine sign. “This precious girl I name Esclarmonde Chandelle—‘Little Candle’—for her beautiful face reflects the light.”
“It is an inspiration,” said the Marquessa.
Esclarmonde held tiny Chandelle to her bosom and thought about what it would feel like to suckle her own child. She looked into its blue eyes with the hope of eliciting a smile—she shuddered with a foreboding.
Corba sensed her alarm. “What’s wrong?”
Esclarmonde moved the candle back and forth, but the infant did not react to the flame. She gave the candle to Phillipa and motioned for her to walk several steps away. The child’s eyes continued to look off into the darkness.
“You’re frightening me!” cried Corba.
The babe’s head jerked toward her mother’s cry. While Phillipa held the candle, Esclarmonde walked two steps away and called out, “Chandelle!”
The infant turned toward her voice. Esclarmonde gestured for the candle to be brought nearer the child’s face. Its eyes remained trained toward the direction of her call. The flame reflected oddly in its glassy corneas.
“My God!” cried Corba. “She’s blind!”
Esclarmonde rescued the infant before Corba collapsed in despair. She blessed the child with a prayer of welcome to the world, and felt a strong connection. She knew in her heart that this soul was special.
The Abbess reentered the room. “We must return now.”
Esclarmonde reluctantly placed Chandelle back into Corba’s shaking arms. “She will bring much joy into our lives, Corba. I promise you.”
“I cannot curse God,” said Corba, stifling her weeping. “I’ve been given a loving husband and child. It is you who needs our prayers.”
The tearful women embraced Esclarmonde one last time.
The Abbess hurried Esclarmonde to the staircase, but Phillipa stopped the nun and pulled her aside to ask something out of earshot of the others. The Abbess hesitated, then nodded her reluctant assent to the whispered request.
As the Mass neared its final benediction, the veiled Abbess walked down the aisle alone and came to the pew where Jourdaine was half-asleep. She whispered to his ear, “There are marks.”
“The witch!” said Jourdaine, rousing with a start. “I knew it!”
“Inflicted by the hands of a demon for certain,” said the Abbess. “Touch her again in violence and your seed will be forever cursed.”
Jourdaine lurched up, bollixed by the charge. Had that bitch of a wife told those nuns of the beatings? He itched to strike out at the insolent Abbess, but he was thwarted by the many witnesses around him. “The Bible prescribes discipline. I’ll suffer no woman to tell me otherwise.”
“Do you read the Bible?” asked the Abbess.
“Of course not. It’s forbidden for laymen.”
“Then how do you know what it permits?”
“Damn you! Reveal your face!”
Before he could rip away her veil, the Abbess removed her red mantle and threw it to the floor. She retreated into the sea of nuns that was pouring out from the stalls into the nave. Jourdaine shoved open a path to give chase, but the Abbess had disappeared into the anonymity of black habits.
Esclarmonde stood waiting at the rear doors for Jourdaine. As the veiled nuns flooded past, one captured her hand and squeezed it. Esclarmonde knew that blessed touch. She tried to reciprocate the gesture, but Phillipa—disguised in the Abbess’s habit—had escaped into the cloister courtyard.
And the Brotherhood holdeth hidden the Grail from all strangers’ eyes ...
- Parsifal
XIII
Constantinople
April 1204
Guilhelm could hear the Greek drungaries across the Golden Horn shouting orders for their arbalests to be loaded. Repulsed in their first attempt to capture the Byzantine city, he and thirty thousand seasick crusaders had stood for two days festering in a muck of brine and manure on the decks of their assault galleys. They watched with suspicion as the Venetian sailors measured the winds in preparation to raise anchors. If the dangerous currents shifted, their armada would be carried into the swirling Straits of St. George, where the galleys would be easy prey for Turkish pirates.
Enrico Dandolo, the blind Doge of Venice, was rowed across
the bows to exhort the assault that he had spent thirty years planning. Cardinal Peter of Capua sat at his side pronouncing the assurances of victory, “See how the Almighty parts the winds! Just as He splayed the sea for the Israelites!”
From deep within the crowded ranks, Guilhelm shouted, “And did the Israelites sack and murder their own people?”
The Cardinal searched the decks for the source of that blasphemous utterance. “Who dares question God’s mission?”
Guilhelm removed his helmet and pushed to the fore. “A Christian! As are the men on those battlements!”
“The schismatics purge their altars with vinegar after our services and lower baskets of crumbs to us as if we are lepers!” countered the Cardinal.
Guilhelm spat his disgust into the putrid Bosphorus water. He had long suspected the Pope of intriguing to bring Byzantium to heel. This motley force of Germans, Franks, and Angevins had been beguiled into delaying its advance on the Holy Land to attack the most fortified city in the Christian world. A second crusader army had already sacked the nearby city of Zara and stood waiting near the Castle of Bohemond, assigned the task of taking the inland walls from the north. He surveyed the temper of the men around him. Most were petty knights, debtors, and sinners on pilgrimage, all led by a few land-hungry barons. Yet surely even these dregs would have qualms about such an unprovoked aggression. He tried to shake them from their moral lethargy. “The Doge and his circus trainers have led us by the nose for their own designs!”
The shriveled Methuselah who wore the ostentatious Lion of St. Mark signaled for his drummers to drown out Guilhelm’s protest. Having long nurtured a vendetta against the Byzantines, the Doge was not prepared to see it scuttled at this final hour. As a young diplomat in this city, he had lost his sight to a royal eunuch whose expertise was the manipulation of a reflecting glass to burn the corneas of unsuspecting victims. He now made tactical decisions based on his faded memory of the city’s defenses—a fact that Guilhelm feared the Greek spies had discovered. With his high-pitched screech of a voice, the old Venetian harangued the crusaders for their cowardice. “You Franks ask us to risk our ships and plead penury when you are aboard! You promised to take those walls if I forgave your debts!”
“We are the blind ones!” shouted Guilhelm. “If we weren’t burdened with Venetian usury, we’d be in Jerusalem by now!”
The Doge resorted to a time-proven tactic to abort the brewing insurrection. “There are vast storehouses of gold within that city! You shall all be wealthy beyond your dreams! God’s reward awaits you!”
His promise elicited the expected response. The crusaders donned their armor and rattled their blades in a clatter of greed. Filled with a loathing for this spectacle of bloodlust, Guilhelm prepared to disembark, preferring starvation on the plains of Chalcedon to such an abomination. But the Doge’s guards blocked his path off the galley.
Advised that the malcontent was a Templar, the Doge curled a devious smile. “If your conscience prevents you from fighting apostates, monk, we will gladly relieve you of your weapons to help you avoid the temptation of sin.”
Guilhelm had no choice but to return to his station. These thieving Venetians might force him to remain with this army, but they could not require him to kill fellow believers once the battle was commenced.
Satisfied that the mutiny had been strangled, the Cardinal of Padua raised his hands and shouted the traditional martial benediction, “God wills it!”
Thousands of sails unfurled at once. Oars sliced into the sea and lifted the quilled galleys in a great surge forward, stretching as far as the eye could see. Halfway across the Horn, Guilhelm heard a low whistling and saw the torches atop Constantinople’s ramparts disappear from view. He lifted his shield seconds before a hail of catapulted missiles rattled the decks. Impaled men and horses dropped to the boards with a horrific groan. The stiffening winds had cleared the skies, affording the Byzantine gunners an open vista. Puffs of smoke crackled amid tongues of low lightning. The sea rocked as if struck by an earthquake.
“Greek fire!” shouted the coxswain.
Streams of ignited sulfur and linseed oil arced from the Byzantine walls. The crusaders were given enough warning to take cover, but the slaves shackled below the decks were flayed horribly. The Venetian gunners retaliated by pumping jets of boiling naphtha from the mouths of the brass lions perched atop their bow beaks. The beachhead came into sight and the galleys tightened their formations. The severest test was now at hand: Five of the largest ships had been tethered together to carry an assault tower with gangplanks. The ramps of the first galleys ashore dropped into the frothing waves and disgorged a tangled exodus of horses, knights, and siege guns.
Guilhelm cursed his fortune. Directly above him stood the Petrion tower manned by the Waring Guards from Daneland. These moustached mercenaries—descendants of the Vikings who had swept across the British Isles—were armed with their infamous battle-axes. He had drawn the task of confronting the most hardened of the city’s defenders, who were sworn to fight to the death for Murtzuphulus, the notorious usurper of the Byzantine crown. The long-bearded Archbishop of Constantinople stood at their side brandishing the venerated Palladium, a miracle-working icon that had repulsed every assault on these walls during the last eight hundred years.
Guilhelm could only stand by and watch from his galley as the Warings split the skulls of the first Franks up the ladders. He girded his breastplate and prepared to take his turn in the second assault when a hand grasped his arm.
“You are not alone, brother.” The knight at his side angled his shield to display within its concave interior the beausant insignia of the Temple. He lifted his visor, revealing the weathered face of an elderly man with with sharp, intelligent eyes. “I am Baroche. Preceptor of the Lombard commanderie.”
“I was told the Temple had forsworn this siege,” said Guilhelm.
“This enterprise is a ruse by the Doge to get his hands on the Emperor’s treasures.” A missile whistled past their ears and crushed several Franks to their rear. Baroche leaned closer for a whisper. “The Greeks possess relics of incalculable worth. I have been sent by the Grand Master to recover them. Will you assist me?”
Guilhelm angled his shoulder to prevent the other knights from overhearing. “If I am to risk my life, I must know more.”
After a hesitation, Baroche allowed, “The relics are from Jerusalem.”
Guilhelm’s curiosity was whetted. “The true Cross?”
Baroche snorted with contempt at the suggestion that he would undertake such a dangerous quest for a slither of useless wormwood. “A manuscript. And with it a remembrance of Our Lord far more precious than you can imagine.” He tugged at Guilhelm’s Templar mantle. “Discard this. The Greeks will take aim for it first.”
Their galley rammed the shoals—the sally ramp exploded into the sea. Guilhelm was swept out into a whirlpool of thrashing men and frightened horses. He kicked to find the bottom but his armor drove him deeper into the churning undertow. He went black as he lost the last of the air in his lungs. The din of battle transformed into a peaceful quiet.
There are worse ways to die.
He was pulled upward. Salt stung his eyes as they broke the surface. Baroche was dragging him to the shore. Spitting sea wash, Guilhelm crawled to his horse amid the churn of drowning men. On the beachhead, the sappers dug furiously at the base of the wall. Those crusaders who had managed to crawl to land now confronted a new terror—boiling pitch.
The two Templars mounted their skittish horses and rode the length of the narrow beachhead in search of a breach. Guilhelm turned back toward the Horn and saw the galleys retreating for the far piers of Galata. “The Venetians are abandoning us!” His warning spread like fire down the ranks. The panicked Franks discarded their armor and swam for the galleys.
A crazed Carthusian monk loosed a bloodcurdling hosanna. Refusing to see Christ’s will denied, he dived headfirst into a small hole that had been bored into the tower’
s gate. The Franks were so astonished by the monk’s reckless act that they rushed back to pull his dangling legs from the hole. His torso reemerged—with his head hacked off. Filled with a collective madness at the gruesome martyrdom, the crusaders converged on the gate and hammered wildly until the beams caved in.
Guilhelm and Baroche drove their horses behind the knights as they swarmed through the gape. Inside the walls they found no defenders. Murtzuphulus and the Warings had retreated into the central city to use the vast network of streets as a firebreak. The citizens strolling along tree-lined parks reacted to the appearance of the Franks as if a pack of wild dromedaries had escaped from their city’s famous zoo. The bloodthirsty crusaders poured down the broad avenues and exacted revenge on the effeminate-looking Greeks, who were easily identified by their painted eyes and perfumed curls.
Guilhelm and Baroche broke free of the scrum and galloped toward the chariot Hippodrome, where the smoke of pillage swirled around the towering Egyptian obelisks. They came upon a mob of crusaders dragging nuns from the Church of the Holy Apostles with the intent to rape them. Guilhelm reined back to go to the aid of the holy women, but Baroche intercepted him.
“Leave them to the Lord’s mercy,” ordered the Templar commander.
When they reached the Aqueduct of Valens, Baroche halted to gain his bearings of the city’s famous seven hills. Reoriented, he led Guilhelm north past the thousands of kneeling Greeks who begged for their lives by traversing their forearms in the sign of the Cross. The main crusader army cut a bloody swath toward the Hagia Sophia to ransack its priceless icons and ornaments, but the Templars reversed course and climbed the Petrion Hill. There they were stopped short by a fire raging through the wooden bazaars. Caught in the maze of smoke-filled wynds, Baroche searched frantically for an escape route.
Guilhelm’s helmet clogged with soot. Nearly overcome, he lashed his balking steed deeper into the flames. He stumbled out on the far side of the holocaust and dropped gasping from his saddle. Baroche had not followed him. Guilhelm hurled himself back into the inferno and found the Templar commander ghastly burned. He dragged Baroche from the flames, too late.
