When "Envoy of Jerusalem" opens, Maria Comnena, Lady of Ibelin, is in Tyre with her daughter and household. They had been escorted to safety here by members of Saladin's own guard. Her husband, Balian, however, remained behind in Jerusalem to defend the city -- a city that has just fallen to Saladin.
Maria
took a hand-held, glass lamp in one hand and her skirts in
the other and mounted the interior wooden stairs to the floor above. On the
landing she stopped to listen. There were four chambers on this floor. The
largest had been turned into a nursery for her two youngest children, her
sister-in-law’s two little boys, and her niece’s two babies along with the nurse.
The smallest of the four rooms was where her confessor and her children’s
tutor, Father Angelus, and the three school-aged children slept. The remaining
two rooms were for herself, her adult daughter Isabella, her sister-in-law
Eloise, and her husband’s niece Eschiva.
The
nursery seemed thankfully still. Either the children had not grasped the
significance of the fall of Jerusalem, their nurse had managed to quell their
fears, or they had simply been given enough wine to make them sleep. From the
schoolroom on the other hand, Maria could hear the angry voice of her eldest
son, John. John was now eight and he was a bright and alert child. He had been
very cognizant of what fate had awaited them in Jerusalem — and over-joyed when
his father arrived like an archangel to spirit them away to safety. That his
father had decided to remain behind in Jerusalem while the women and children
were sent to safety in Tyre, however, had outraged him. He’d been too
frightened to want to remain, but he’d been furious with his father too. He was
querulous now, and she could sense the rage in his voice even without hearing
his words. Why, why, why did his father have to die? Why had he thrown his life
away when he could have been here,
with us, safe in Tyre?
Maria
knew she ought to go to him and comfort him, but how could she? How could she
help when part of her felt the same childish rage? Better to leave him to the
seasoned and stoical Father Angelus, whose calm voice rumbled in answer to the
boy’s high-pitched piping.
Maria
turned and continued down the hall. Then next room was silent she noted with
relief because she had no desire to face her sister-in-law Eloise. At last she reached her own chamber and took a deep breath, knowing that her
daughter Isabella would be waiting up for her on the other side of the door. Part
of her would have preferred to be left alone, but what sort of daughter would
just go to bed when her mother had just learned she was a widow?
Maria
pushed open the door to find not just Isabella but Eschiva, her husband’s
niece, sitting beside the little table at the window overlooking the street.
The young women had been raised together for several years as children and
their friendship had withstood separation and marriage. They were evidently in
earnest conversation, but they jumped up at the sound of the door opening.
Isabella
ran to her mother. “Mama! We were getting worried! Are you alright?” Isabella
was 15 years old and even her mother could see she had left childhood behind
and was now very much a nubile beauty with a womanly figure as well as a lovely
face. She seemed to fly across the room to take her mother in her
arms, her expression of concern both sincere and melodramatic.
“I’m
not on the brink of collapse, if that’s what you mean,” Maria answered her
daughter, at once muting her emotions and patting her in thanks. With their
arms locked, Maria and Isabella returned to the table as Eschiva slipped onto
the wooden window seat to vacate her chair for the Dowager Queen.
In
this company, Eschiva often felt like the dowdy sparrow or the poor cousin.
Maria Comnena might be thirty-three years old, but she was still a strikingly
handsome woman. She had, after all, been selected as a bride for King Amalric
in part because she was an exceptionally pretty child, and it was largely from
her that Isabella had her budding beauty. Eschiva on the other hand had never
been deemed a great beauty, and she had not withstood the trials of life as
apparently unscathed as Maria. Eschiva had grieved for the loss of two infants and
been abandoned by both her parents separately. At 22 she looked more like 30, a
fact underlined by her simple linen wimple and plain cotton gown. Here in the
company of princesses and queens, she remained nothing but the wife of a
landless, younger son — that, or wife of a man, whose brother had squandered a
kingdom on a single day, or the wife of the constable of a kingdom that no longer
existed.
A
single candle burned in a silver candlestick on the little table, but there was
a silver pitcher filled with wine, another with water and three silver chalices
as well — all goods the Dowager Queen had sagely packed onto the backs of
protesting brood mares as she salvaged as much of her movable fortune as
possible from Jerusalem. As Maria settled herself in the armed chair softened
with down-filled cushions, Isabella reached for the pitcher. “Mixed or pure,
Mama?”
“I
think I need it pure, sweetheart,” Maria admitted leaning her head against the
high back of the chair and closing her eyes for a moment. Then she half opened
them and considered her companions. Eschiva might technically be only her
niece by marriage, but she had come to live with Maria and Balian at
Ibelin when her mother retired to a convent. She had remained in their household two years, and the bonds forged in
those two years had never weakened. Eschiva looked to Maria more as an elder
sister than an uncle’s wife, while Maria’s protectiveness of Eschiva had been
tempered by growing respect for her strength in adversity and common sense. It
was too Eschiva, therefore, that she directed her next remark, “So what have
you decided we should do?”
Eschiva
started slightly, surprised by the Dowager Queen’s directness, but she was
pleased by this mark of the older woman’s respect for her common sense. “Well,
the first thing we need to do is demand more information from Salah ad-Din.
After all, we don’t know for sure
that Uncle Balian is dead. He might have surrendered and been taken captive as
were our husbands.” Eschiva’s husband, Aimery de Lusignan, and Isabella’s
husband, Humphrey de Toron, had both been taken captive at Hattin and were
being held in the citadel at Aleppo.
Maria
considered the two women before her. Both were nodding vigorously. She shook
her head and reminded them: “You know as well as I do the Council in Jerusalem
said they would kill their own families and then sortie out to certain death before
they would surrender Jerusalem.”
“But
the Patriarch condemned that as unchristian and Uncle Balian opposed it as
fanaticism.” Isabella pointed out passionately.
“Men
are always braver before a battle
than after one,” Eschiva added with a cynicism Maria had not expected of her.
“I don’t mean Uncle Balian,” Eschiva hastened to explain, mistaking Maria’s expression
of surprise. “No one can doubt his courage, but the rest of the men on the
council — they were merchants, tradesmen and clerics. Remember too that no
one crowed louder about fighting for Christ than my brother-in-law Guy, yet he
surrendered, did he not?”
Maria
only raised her eyebrows, too exhausted to give vent to her feelings about Guy
de Lusignan. She reminded the younger women instead, “My lord husband broke his
word to Salah ad-Din when he chose to remain in Jerusalem rather than just bring
me and the children to safety. Salah ad-Din is ruthless to those he thinks have
betrayed him.”
“He
sent his own men to escort you to safety,” Eschiva pointed out.
Maria
dismissed it with a wave of her hand and retorted tartly, “He did that because
he didn’t want to provoke my cousin in Constantinople.”
Eschiva
and Isabella exchanged a glance. They wanted
to believe the Sultan would be generous; so much depended on it.
As
if sensing their distress, Maria softened her stance. “You are right to suggest
appealing directly to Salah ad-Din, Eschiva. He still wants the good will of
the Greek Emperor, and he will respond to an inquiry from me with courtesy —
regardless of the news. If he has killed Lord Balian, than I can request him to return the remains. If he has him in prison, I can ask what ransom he has set.”
She nodded and reached for the wine.
Isabella
and Eschiva drank too as Maria sipped cautiously, evidently lost in thought as
she stared at the candle. “There is one thing that puzzles me,” Maria admitted
softly. Her two companions looked at her expectantly. “In all their jubilation
and triumph today, the Saracens failed to brag about the slaughter that had
taken place. That’s not like them, you know. They revel in telling us of their
bloody deeds. It was from them that
we learned of the execution of the captive Templars and Hospitallers. They were
proud of hacking off the heads of bound and kneeling prisoners. And they had
promised to ‘wash away’ the slaughter of 88 years ago in a new river of blood.
Don’t you remember how our escort told us that ‘if your horses walked in blood
up to their fetlocks, ours will swim
in blood.’ Remember?”
Eschiva
nodded and gripped her chalice, remembering how terrified she had been when one
of the escort who spoke French had ridden beside them to deliver this message
with an expression of gleeful hatred. She had been sure it was a prelude to
violence against them, and she had started praying frantically. Instead, he had
been called to order by the escort commander, and they had been treated
courteously thereafter. Isabella, however, jumped to her feet in agitation. “For
all their silks and perfumes they are more bloodthirsty than ravenous wolves!
They are —“
“Hush,
Isabella,” her mother admonished, gesturing for her to sit down. “You are
right, but the point is that they did not
brag about the rivers of blood and mountains of corpses they had created in
Jerusalem. They did not even taunt us with the fact that my husband’s
‘faithlessness’ had been repaid. It would have been more in character if they
had described in detail the way they had tortured him to death.”
Isabella
and Eschiva were staring at the Dowager Queen in horror, seeing for the first
time the nightmares she had concealed from them. This was what she had been
living with since their departure from Jerusalem: the fear that the man she
loved would not meet a noble death in battle but live to be tortured and
humiliated. It was a fear she had not dared breathe to anyone because she did not want to
add to their already considerable uncertainty and grief. She had carried it alone.
Now
she looked from her daughter to her niece and back again, and something like
hope shimmered in her eyes. “I’m sure they would have gloated if they could,
which means it didn’t happen. Jerusalem has fallen, but there was no slaughter
in the streets, and Lord Balian was not publicly tortured and butchered. So. We
must find out what did happen.”
My three-part biographical novel is dedicated to bringing Balian, his age and society "back to life."
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