Текст книги "The Road to Jerusalem"
Автор книги: Jan Guillou
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Erik Jedvardsson's brother Joar was the owner of one of the farms outside Eriksberg, and he had a daughter, his eldest and not very fair, but for whom he would no doubt gladly hold a betrothal ale even for a man less wealthy than Magnus.
Magnus sighed when he heard his younger brother present this proposal. He already knew how it would turn out. His own blood would be used to bind the clan to a future important enemy or a future important ally. About this matter he could say nothing but that it sounded wise. So be it.
Eskil, who was having a hard time seeing the logic in choosing kinsmen among those who killed instead of those who had the right sort of wealth, gave his father a distressed look. He knew how it would turn out. He would soon have a new stepmother, about whom he knew nothing except that she was evidently not very fair.
Never had Arn seen Brother Guilbert as happy as the day the new horses arrived. There was a stallion, two mares, and a colt, and they were led in at once to their own pasture so that they wouldn't mix with the Nordic horses. They seemed to be in fine condition. Their journey had not been arduous in such a good season with plenty of grazing and water along the way. They had returned with Father Henri from one of his constant journeys to the general chapter in Cîteaux. Since Father Henri and the brothers who accompanied him had traveled most of the way on foot, as usual, and since the two heavy wagons with traveling goods had been pulled by donkeys, the horses seemed to be thoroughly rested.
It was always a big event at the monastery when Father Henri returned from the general chapter. All the monks faithfully obeyed and for the most part honestly applied the rule of charity, but they were also eager for everything else he brought: the news, the letters, the new books, the knowledge of what was happening out in the secular world as well as in the ecclesiastical circles, as well as all the kernels, seeds, and cuttings that Brother Lucien cast himself upon with the enthusiasm of a child. Finally the monks were also eager to receive the cheeses and casks of wine that at least the Burgundian brothers had a hard time living without, just as the Provençal cooks had a hard time imagining cloister life without a new supply of certain herbs that Brother Lucien had not managed to grow in the harsh Danish climate.
Many of the brothers had difficulty observing the discipline and dignity that such a homecoming demanded, although they first had to celebrate mass to mark Father Henri's return. And it was always longer than usual because the choir had learned some new songs, or old songs were presented in new voicings for this occasion, with prayers of thanksgiving for the father's return. Arn, who still retained his lovely soprano voice, had a particularly difficult time at such masses.
But afterward the brothers would stream out of the church chattering happily like small boys in anticipation of the ceremonies, led by Father Henri, which would begin as they unpacked the heaps of baggage. Father Henri read through his list, checking off each item and distributing God's gifts. Some brothers then went off whispering and giggling with glee with a longawaited volume in their hands, while others praised the Lord with more dignity. The same was true of those who received new items for the garden or the kitchen.
But this time Brother Guilbert slipped away with Arn, taking him by the arm to show him the finest gift of all, though none of the other monks had any understanding of such matters: the new horses.
When they reached the pasture Arn tried hard to understand what was making the otherwise restrained Brother Guilbert so visibly excited. To Arn's eye these horses did indeed differ a great deal from ordinary horses. They were leaner and livelier, they moved all the time as if they were nervous at being cooped up, they ran back and forth with catlike soft movements with their tails held high. Their faces looked a little wider and more triangular than those of Nordic horses, and their eyes were very big and intelligent. Their color was different. One of the mares was reddish-brown like many other horses, but had a big gray spot down her left shoulder, while her half-grown foal was almost white with gray shading. The stallion and the other mare were dapple gray in color.
More than this Arn was unable to judge, even though he had worked a long time in the second most important of Brother Guilbert's workshops, the horseshoe smithy. Arn could shoe a horse so that neither Brother Guilbert nor any of the lay brothers had to redo his work.
Brother Guilbert stood silently leaning over the fence of the enclosure with tears in his eyes as he looked at the horses, as if he were far away in his thoughts. Arn waited expectantly.
To the boy's surprise, Brother Guilbert suddenly began talking to the stallion in a language Arn had never heard before; he didn't understand a word of it. But the stallion seemed to pay attention at once. He stopped and pricked up his ears toward Brother Guilbert, and after a brief hesitation calmly approached him. Brother Guilbert then rubbed his face against the horse's muzzle in an unbecoming way and again spoke the strange language.
"Come, my boy, we're going to go riding, you and I. You can take the colt," said Brother Guilbert, swinging in under the fence and pulling Arn with him.
"But the colt . . . that won't work, will it? He isn't broken yet, is he?" Arn objected with obvious hesitation in his voice.
"Come here and I'll show you, it's not necessary!" said Brother Guilbert, calling the little colt, who came trotting over.
What happened then seemed to Arn like a miracle. Brother Guilbert stroked the colt over his muzzle and cheeks and neck, again speaking the foreign language, which the horses seemed to understand better than French or Latin. After a moment he simply lifted Arn up with one arm like a mitten so that Arn ended up astride the horse. The boy automatically grabbed hold of the colt's mane so he could hold on tight when the bucking started; he had helped break horses before, but never from the very first day.
The next moment Brother Guilbert swung himself up onto the stallion in one fluid movement; he seemed to fly up, and the stallion instantly set off on a wild gallop around the pasture. There sat Brother Guilbert bareback, holding lightly onto the stallion's mane with one hand, leaning daringly into the sharpest curves, yelling one thing after another to the horse in that odd language.
Arn's young colt was soon infected by the glee and began running around too, although at a jerky, more infantile gait. But soon the two of them were galloping faster and faster. In his delight Arn began mimicking Brother Guilbert's foreign language, as if intoxicated by the speed and the wind.
With a little shame Arn felt that he was now experiencing true and pure joy, and this was something he should not forget to bring up with Father Henri at his next confession. It was as if the horse's life and power were flowing through him, even though the colt was so young and so far from being an accomplished steed. And if he hadn't been broken for riding, which he certainly could not have been since he was so young, and if he had never had a rider on his back, then this in truth was a miracle.
"You see, my young chevalier, the horse is in truth man's best friend," said Brother Guilbert much later, when the nightingales had begun their evening song and it would soon be time for vespers, as they sat in the grass in the garden simply enjoying watching the new horses. "But these new horses are not like others, as you have already seen. They are the most noble, intelligent, fast, and tolerant horses that exist. Praise God for this gift, because they are horses from the Holy Land, Outremer."
Brother Guilbert was red in the face with excitement, and he was still breathing hard after his wild exhibition of the stallion's great power.
Arn had already begun to understand what distinguished these horses from others, not only in their appearance and their bearing and movements, but also in how they could be used. Yet he still asked and then received the answer he was expecting.
These horses were horses of war. What was true of swords was also true of horses: agility, agility, and more agility.
Since the men up here in the barbaric North had not yet adopted the art of fighting on horseback, Brother Guilbert went on, Nordic men needed strong, slow horses that could carry a heavy load to the battlefield. There the Nordic men would dismount, tether their horses, and then enter the fray on foot. If the Christians had attempted to meet the accursed Saracens in that manner, Jerusalem never would have been liberated.
But in the rest of the world, men fought on horseback; it was only the barbaric North that had not seized upon that strategy. And that's why Brother Guilbert had a clear, simple idea for using these horses, whose bloodlines he could now spread throughout Denmark. He would introduce the techniques associated with the new horses, and thus bring in a great deal of silver to the cloister. Almost the same way they did so by forging better swords for the men of the North. The one method ought to be as logical and profitable as the other.
Still sensing the wind in his hair and the speed on the horse, Arn now asked eagerly and without the proper courtesy to be taught the art of fighting on horseback, as the Christians did out in the great civilized world.
Brother Guilbert laughed silently to himself, grabbed Arn playfully by the tonsure, and explained that he had been doing that all along. From the beginning. Everything that Arn had learned about horses since the day he had been put to work was directed toward that goal.
What was of foremost importance was balance, above all balance. When Arn had practiced with his wooden swords, sometimes with one in each hand, he had stood on a pole with leather sacks full of sand swinging back and forth above him, always threatening to knock him to the ground. In the same way he had practiced riding horses from the beginning, always riding bareback without a saddle. All this was for the sake of balance, so that he would be able to sit his horse no matter which way it moved.
Now his task was to break the colt, at first without a saddle, and get to know the horse, talk to him, stroke him, and always take care of him. And his name had to be a secret name, not secret from God but otherwise just between the two of them. The colt would be called Khamsiin, which was the name of a desert wind, a wind that could blow for fifty days and never grow weary. The two mares would be called Aisha and Khadiya, and the stallion Nasir. Brother Guilbert did not explain the names, saying only that each name came from the secret language of the horses. It was not something that concerned other monks in the cloister, but only the two who were chevaliers.
A saddle would be made as soon as Khamsiin was grown, but until then it was the fundamentals that were important: trust, love, and balance.
The bell rang for vespers and they had to run to the lavatorium. As they dashed off, Arn asked whether it would be possible for him to learn the secret language of the horses too. If he spoke three languages already, surely he could speak four? Brother Guilbert smiled to himself and muttered something to the effect that the day would no doubt come. But that was all he said.
Arn had always been obedient. He loved the brothers as much as he loved books. He loved hard work as much as the easier tasks. He had set stones up in the tower of the cloister church, he had caught fish in the fjord. He loved the work with sword and bow as much as the work of following the path of faith in the Holy Scriptures, verse by verse and with the help of the Glossa Ordinaria. He may have loved Aristotle somewhat less and Ovid somewhat more, although in secret he occasionally composed imitations of the unchaste verses he had managed to read before they were taken away and locked up. Naturally he confessed afterward and took his punishment for the sin, but it was worth it. What were a few extra Pater Nosters compared with the hot rushing sensation in his body at the thought of Ovid?
Father Henri had no difficulty tolerating Arn's flagging interest in the philosopher and his somewhat overheated interest in writings that were inappropriate for boys. As far as Ovid was concerned, more than one God-fearing man of his acquaintance had put more emphasis on these studies than was suitable, both as a youth and as a man. It was nothing to cause alarm; he be longed to that category himself, at least when he looked back on his time as a novice. These were the normal fluctuations of life, nothing more. God in his wisdom had created life so that there was constant variation. If the boy did not find the philosopher very interesting—he sometimes made little impertinent objections, especially to the logical arguments—it was no wonder that, if this was a sin, it would be a sin that the boy shared with Brother Lucien, for example. Brother Lucien was devoted to the art of better enriching the world, in God's name, with plants that could be grown for the table, or to cure the ills of humankind, or perhaps merely to bring beauty into people's lives. But he was not very interested in reading Aristotle. Yet Father Henri would never dream of thinking of Brother Lucien as any less worthy because of that, or a brother to love less than the other brothers.
On the other hand, if someone in jest was to argue the logic the way the philosopher would have done, it might seem that the boy belonged to those who were also devoted to Brother Lucien's teaching. It was very exacting and meticulous but important work that lay behind the monastery's demonstration of the beauty that God could create on earth with the help of faithful brothers. The white snowdrops were the first flowers, pushing up through winter's still hard and inhospitable shell; then with the warmth came the Easter lilies, the white narcissus, and the tulips, all of them new to the barbaric North. Visitors who came at the right time would gasp in enchantment at the blossoms on the fruit trees, all of them unknown to the barbarians, fruits such as apples, pears, and cherries. The sales of these fruits had gone wonderfully in recent years, and Arn was also the one who helped Brother Lucien fetch the wares and translate into the Nordic tongue.
Arn had maintained a balance with everything that he'd learned, and there was nothing to worry about in that respect. As long as one didn't believe, like some of the more rigid brothers, that sword and lance had nothing to do with God's work on earth. But brothers who thought this way had not sufficiently studied the father of them all, Saint Bernard, who had been the leading creator of the Knights Templar, more than the Pope or any other man of the cloth.
And yet. There was now a problem with the boy. Since the new horses had arrived he seemed to have gone a bit crazy. It seemed fair to say that he had acquired a vice or an urge, an interest that overshadowed all other interests. And the question then became, in a higher and strategic perspective, whether God truly wanted this or whether God wanted to see his chosen lad reprimanded. And in a more tactical perspective, how should a wise prior go about handling such a rebuke?
Father Henri had summoned Brother Guilbert on more than one occasion in order to discuss the problem. But it seemed as though the good Guilbert wanted to defuse the matter with clichés such as "boys will be boys" and "what would you have done or thought at that age?" He also said they needed to understand the delight of novelty, and mentioned that it was all part of the general education he was giving Arn.
Perhaps that was true. And yet the boy's infatuation was so strong that it obviously risked overshadowing, at least temporarily, even his interest in books. As Arn's confessor, Father Henri knew much more about this than Brother Guilbert. Arn was no more capable than anyone else of lying when he made confession to his prior.
Arn saw the problem simply as a matter of confessing and admitting his sinful disposition and then doing penance. He had no idea that it was something that actually worried Father Henri; that would have made him feel both sad and ashamed. For now it led only to the minor punishments of extra prayers and maybe a few days on bread and water.
When Khamsiin had grown so much that he was no longer a colt but a real horse, the love between Arn and the young stallion grew. One night when the summer was in full bloom, so that the nights were light and mild in Jutland, Arn got up after only a few hours of sleep following the midnight mass. He sneaked out to the stable, took down the saddle and bridle, and whispered some words into the darkness of night. Khamsiin came to him at once, bending his head down and accepting the boy's hot kisses and caresses on his soft muzzle.
Then Arn mounted the horse, and cautiously they moved off toward the fence, which Khamsiin gently jumped over in almost feline silence. They walked slowly for a while, finally increasing speed so much that they must have been the fastest horse and rider ever to cross Danish soil. They stormed along like the horsemen of the apocalypse through the soft, rolling landscape and the sparse beech woods. Some nights they went all the way out to the sea, knowing that they risked having to keep up the same pace on the way back to be able to arrive in time for morning mass.
Rumors soon spread in the region about a ghost rider, an omen, a bad sign, a spirit who rode as no mortal man could ride even in dreams, a dwarf with evil sharp teeth and a glittering sword of fire.
The sword, however, was made of wood with an iron core inside for the sake of weight. But in his fantasies Arn rode with a sword that could well have been of fire. He swung it back and forth with his left hand, switched the sword and reins at full gallop and then brandished the weapon in his right hand. But the sword was not the most important thing. It was more as if he were placating his guilty conscience by doing a little work while he was out riding for pleasure instead of sleeping the sleep of the just, which was recommended by God.
It was the speed that captivated him. As young as he was, Khamsiin had a power in his legs that no other horse Arn had ridden could ever match. Arn imagined that Khamsiin was being carried forward by a supernatural power, as if this speed was something that only God could have created, and as if on Khamsiin he was flying closer to God than at any other time.
It was a sinful thought, of course. Arn knew that. He said the prayers and denied himself what he must to seek forgiveness.
But what speed! he thought. Shamefully enough, even during his most remorseful prayers.
Chapter 5
On Christmas Day in the year of Grace 1144, the Christians in the Kingdom of Jerusalem suffered their greatest defeat since they conquered the Holy Land. In Christian Europe there were many people who realized that the fall of the city of Odessa was a catastrophe. But nobody could imagine that what had happened was the beginning of the end of the Christian occupation.
At that time, a half century after the victory that had cost the Christians more than 100,000 lives, the Kingdom of Jerusalem consisted of a cohesive coastal region that stretched from Gaza in southern Palestine through Jerusalem and Haifa to the coast of Lebanon and up to Antioch. But north of Antioch, there was a large Christian enclave around the city of Odessa, which together with Antioch on the coast controlled all the roads between the Christian Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople and the three cities of Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Damascus. Second only to Jerusalem itself, Odessa had been the Christians' most important fortress.
But now the city had been conquered, plundered, and relegated to the oblivion of history by a commander whose name hardly anyone in Europe knew. He was called Unadeddin Zinki. The conquest ended in a bloodbath in which 5,000 Franks and 6,000 Armenians and other local Christians were massacred after the walls fell. In their stead Zinki let 300 Jews move into the city in an attempt to bring Odessa back to life. The Jews were much closer to the Muslims than to the Christians, since the Christians had the peculiar custom of murdering all the Jews they encountered.
Zinki was a powerful, ambitious, and ruthless commander. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted to take Damascus, the next most important city after Jerusalem, and from there draw the noose tighter around the Christians.
The Muslim inhabitants of Damascus, however, felt not the slightest enthusiasm at the thought of having this unpredictable and cruel ruler inside their high city walls. And when Zinki was on his way to Damascus, he was forced to stop and lay siege to the town of Baalbek. He grew angry that it was taking so long, so when Baalbek finally capitulated after the garrison had been given the usual assurances of safe conduct, he had all the defenders beheaded and the commander flayed alive.
Perhaps he thought that such actions would strike terror into the inhabitants of Damascus and encourage them to offer less resistance. But the effect was the direct opposite. Damascus formed an alliance with the Christian king of Jerusalem, because both cities, regardless of religion, had just as much to fear from a conqueror such as Zinki.
When his troops understood that the war was over for the time being, and that they would never succeed in conquering and plundering Damascus itself, they headed for home well loaded with booty and satisfied for now. Zinki's army melted away. At this time, he came upon his Christian eunuch secretly drinking wine out of his personal goblet. He contented himself with hurling threats about what the punishment would be for such a display of insolence, but decided first to sleep on the matter. The eunuch decided it was better to stick his dagger into him while he slept.
This too might have looked like a favorable matter for the Christians, for now Zinki's conquests would be divided up among his sons, and that would take time and possibly lead to minor wars among themselves. The second avenging crusade could hardly wish for a more advantageous situation.
But Allah had something else in mind. Of Zinki's sons, the one who now pulled the ring, the sign of the ruler, from his dead father's hand was Mahmud; he would soon be given the surname Nur ed-Din, the Light of Religion.
Nur ed-Din soon created a revival movement. But he was careful not to try to take Damascus before the time was ripe, and instead made Aleppo his capital.
With Nur ed-Din and above all the one who would come after him, Salah ed-Din, the Christian presence in the Holy Land was doomed to destruction. It was now only a matter of time before Jerusalem would fall. But only someone who writes with the wisdom of hindsight and who knows the true sequence of events can tell this story.
When the news of the fall of Odessa spread through Europe, it aroused as much gloom as consternation. If Christendom did not strike back soon and hard, the unbelievers might decide to attack Jerusalem itself; that was the purely military conclusion even men of faith could understand.
Pope Eugenius III began working at once to promote a second crusade that would secure Christian access to the Holy Sepulchre and all the other destinations for pilgrims.
He did the only right thing in this awkward situation. He called in Bernard de Clairvaux under the holy banners.
Bernard de Clairvaux was at this time the most influential man within the spiritual world, and probably the best speaker in the secular world. When it became known that Bernard was going to speak in the cathedral in Vézelay in March 1146, such huge crowds came that it was obvious that the cathedral would not be able to hold them all. Instead a wooden platform was constructed outside the town. Bernard had not been speaking long before the ten thousand or more gathered there began shouting for crosses.
A great number of cloth crosses had been readied, and Bernard now began to pass them out, first to the king and his vassals– not even the reluctant counts and barons would have been able to resist the wave of enthusiasm and conviction that now swept forward—and then to all the others. Finally Bernard began tearing strips from his own clothes to give new recruits a cross of cloth to wear as a sign that they had now sworn themselves to the Holy War; it also indicated that after a brief campaign they would obtain eternal forgiveness for all their sins.
Not without some pride Bernard was able to write to the Pope about his efforts:
You gave the order. I obeyed. And the Power that gave the order made my obedience bear fruit. I opened my mouth. I spoke and instantly the number of Crusaders had multiplied beyond counting. Entire villages and towns are now deserted. There is hardly one man for every seven women, and everywhere one sees widows whose husbands are still alive.
The Christian revival in Europe now spread with the same force as Nur ed-Din's revival spread around Aleppo. Bernard de Clairvaux had to venture out on long journeys and day after day repeat what he had said, first to Burgundy, then to Lorraine and Flanders.
But since the revival had spread to Germany the usual problems arose, the same as those during the First Crusade. The Archbishop of Cologne had to hurriedly summon Bernard because a Cistercian monk by the name of Peter the Venerable was going around Germany with a message that was Bernard's when it reached the Holy Land but a quite different one when it reached the Jews of Europe.
As a result of his preaching, pogroms broke out in Cologne, Mainz, Worms, Spies, and Strassburg. The Jews were murdered, in some places down to the very last one.
On his arrival Bernard quickly imposed a penance on Peter the Venerable to take a vow of silence for a year, to repent, and at once to return to his cloister in Cluny and never again get involved in something he didn't understand.
After that Bernard had to replicate his whole French tour in Germany, where, despite the fact that he had to work through an interpreter, he won the same reception for the Holy War. But now he also had to make a monumental effort to put a stop to the persecution of the Jews, repeating over and over that "whosoever attacks a Jew to take his life, it will be as though he had struck Jesus Christ Himself."
With that, the focus of the aroused masses could once again be directed toward what was important, and the Second Crusade became a reality. The German king Konrad made a pact with King Louis VII, and soon an army of countless soldiers plundered its way through Europe on its way to the Holy War. By the time they arrived in Christian Constantinople the French and German armies had created great internal discord, mostly due to quarrels about who had the first right to plunder and who would plunder second. From Constantinople they decided to take different routes toward Jerusalem. Konrad would proceed through the interior of Asia Minor while Louis would take the coastal route, and they would meet up in Antioch. King Konrad of Germany, who had chosen the interior but more dangerous road through Asia Minor in the belief that there would be more to plunder than along the safer coast road, became brutally familiar with what could happen when a heavily armored European army of knights faced the superior light Oriental cavalry. He was attacked by Turkish forces at Dorylaeum and lost ninetenths of his army.
When the two European armies met at Antioch, the French considerably less decimated than the German, they were received in princely style by the local ruler, Count Raymond. King Baldwin of Jerusalem also joined them, and it was then time for feasting, of course, but later for careful planning.
The newly arrived warriors in God's army probably had no idea who Zinki was, much less that he was dead, and that now they would face a considerably more dangerous enemy in his son, Nur ed-Din.
The local Frankish Christians naturally had a clearer sense of the situation. Either they should now go straight to Odessa and retake the city, since it was the fall of Odessa that had triggered the whole crusade, and such a victory would be of great psychological importance, for both sides.
Or else they should head for Aleppo and the main enemy Nur ed-Din, joining the battle that must come sooner or later, and preferably now when they were at their strongest.
But King Louis and King Konrad, who no doubt understood little about conditions in the part of the world where they now found themselves, decided to strike at Damascus instead. If they could conquer the second most important city after Jerusalem then, they agreed, they would be starting the crusade with a great victory that would resound throughout the world. In addition, although they might or might not have said as much out loud, Damascus would be a most magnificent prize to plunder. If nothing else, they would rapidly recoup all their expenses.
The local Franks tried in vain to explain what a mistake it would be to attack Damascus, but they were voted down by the two kings, who were in agreement and also possessed the two largest armies.
So the entire Christian host marched on Damascus, which was sheer madness in more than one sense.
Damascus was not only the most important Muslim city in the region, it was also the only Muslim city that was allied with Jerusalem. If that pact was now broken, it would prove that a Christian's word was not to be trusted. This was something that especially worried the Knights Templar, who did indeed make up the backbone of all Western cavalry.
