Текст книги "The Templar Knight"

Автор книги: Ян Гийу

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If the Folkungs from a distance had looked unwilling or almost hostile in their bearing, they now tempered their stance and made an effort not to show their astonishment when they saw Ulvhilde wearing the magnificent mantle of their enemies as she climbed down from her horse.

Herr Sigurd and his eldest son Folke hurried over to assist Cecilia Blanca and Ulvhilde as they dismounted to receive the welcoming bread.

Even though Sigurd and his sons would be richly compensated and would be able to acquire estates larger than Ulfshem for some of the silver which Birger Brosa had looted during his crusade, there was still the matter of honor. No one could think that it was honorable for Folkungs to have to move for the sake of a pitiful little maiden from the Sverker clan.

But Ulvhilde was not what they had been expecting. For men seldom imagine the enemy’s women to be beauties.

Sigurd Folkesson may have thought about greeting them with harsh words, but could do little more than stammer and hem and haw as he bade them welcome, while his two sons mostly gaped, unable to take their eyes off Ulvhilde.

When the confused welcome speech seemed to be over, Cecilia Blanca sought to rescue Ulvhilde from her embarrassment by saying the words required in response. But Ulvhilde spoke first.

“I greet you Folkungs, Sigurd Folkesson, Folke and Jon, with joy as I return to my childhood home,” Ulvhilde began without the least hint of shyness. Her voice was calm and clear. “What was once between us Sverkers and Folkungs has now been buried, because that was war and now we have peace. So you shall know that it is a pleasure for me to welcome you to Ulfshem and that I feel happy to have you as my friends and guests.”

Her words made such a strong impression that all the Folkungs were speechless. Then Ulvhilde held out her arm to Sigurd Folkesson so that he could lead her into the main building on her property. The eldest son, Folke, eventually realized that he should offer the queen his arm.

As they entered Ulfshem through the large double gate made of oak, Cecilia Blanca smiled with relief; at the same time she was rather amused. The worthy words with which Ulvhilde had surprised her Folkung guests had been borrowed shamelessly from the king. It was almost word for word what King Knut had said to greet Ulvhilde as a guest at Näs not so long ago.

Ulvhilde was a quick learner, as were all who were forced to live in cloisters, thought the queen. But it didn’t help much to be swift to learn; one also needed good sense in order to use what one learned. And that was what Ulvhilde had now shown in a manner as powerful as it was surprising.

The swallow flew, rising steadily on small, swift wings toward the sky.

Chapter 9

If it was really God’s will for the Christians to lose the Holy Land, then He had assigned them such a long and winding road to the great defeat at Saladin’s hands that in each small decisive event it became almost impossible to discern His will.

If that was the case, then the first big step toward the catastrophe was the Christians’ defeat by Saladin at Marj Ayyoun in the year of grace 1179.

As Count Raymond III of Tripoli told Arn when their friendship began, and when they together tried to drown their sorrow at the fortress of Beaufort belonging to the Hospitallers, the defeat at Marj Ayyoun could of course be viewed as merely one in an endless series of battles over almost a hundred years. No side could count on winning every time; for that they were altogether too susceptible to the whims of fate, to weather and wind, reinforcements that did or did not arrive in time, wise and foolish decisions on both sides, and for those who seriously claimed that this was the decisive factor, to God’s ever-inscrutable will. No matter how they tried to explain their fortunes in war, and how much they prayed to the same God, each side would inevitably lose some battles and win others.

But among the knights from King Baldwin IV’s army who were captured at Marj Ayyoun was one of the foremost in the ruling class of barons in Outremer, Baldwin d’Ibelin. For a man of Baldwin d’Ibelin’s position to fall into captivity was naturally mortifying and costly, but it was not a mortal blow.

However, Saladin was the warrior of that era who was more meticulous than any other in obtaining information about the enemy; nothing that had to do with power in Antioch, Tripoli, or Jerusalem escaped Saladin’s attention.

For that reason he knew to set a high price for the release of Baldwin d’Ibelin. He demanded the dizzying sum of 150,000 besants in gold, the highest ransom ever demanded from either side in the almost hundred-year war.

What Saladin knew, and what determined his price, was that Baldwin d’Ibelin was probably going to be the next king of Jerusalem. The leprous King Baldwin IV’s days were numbered, and the reigning monarch had already failed once in his attempt to arrange the succession to the throne by marrying his sister Sibylla off to William Longsword. This Longsword had soon died, presumably from one of the shameful diseases that ravaged the court of Jerusalem, although people called it consumption.

After William Longsword’s death, Sibylla gave birth to a son whom she named after her brother, King Baldwin. But she was in love with Baldwin d’Ibelin, and the king had nothing at all against such an alliance. The Ibelin family was one of the most respected among the land-owning gentry in Outremer, and the marriage between Sibylla and Baldwin d’Ibelin would strengthen the position of the court and diminish the opposition to the worldly landowners in the Holy Land.

Unfortunately for Baldwin d’Ibelin, Saladin was fully informed of this. And since he could claim that in essence he had a king in captivity, he demanded a king’s ransom.

But 150,000 besants in gold was more than the combined assets of the entire Ibelin family, and in this part of the world there was only one man who might put up such a fortune, and that was Emperor Manuel of Constantinople.

Baldwin d’Ibelin sued for his freedom from Saladin by swearing on his honor either to borrow the sum or to return to captivity. Saladin, who had no occasion to doubt the word of a respected knight, agreed to the proposal, and Baldwin d’Ibelin traveled to Constantinople to attempt to persuade the Byzantine emperor to lend him the money.

Emperor Manuel found it rather convenient to have a claim on the next king of Jerusalem for the rest of his life by making an admittedly large contribution. So he lent Baldwin all the gold he needed, and the latter sailed off for Outremer and paid Saladin. Then he was able to return to Jerusalem to report the good news about his freedom and once again resume his love affair with Sibylla.

But Emperor Manuel, Saladin, and Baldwin d’Ibelin himself had not reckoned with the women at the court of Jerusalem and their attitude toward men with large debts. The mother of both the king and his sister Sibylla, the constantly scheming Agnes de Courtenay, had little difficulty in convincing her daughter of the folly of such a relationship burdened by a debt of 150,000 besants in gold.

One of Agnes de Courtenay’s many lovers was a crusader knight who had never exchanged sword blows with the enemy but preferred exercises in bed. His name was Amalrik de Lusignan. Even though he was no warrior he was not slow in seeing the opportunities in the play for power at court. To Agnes he began praising his younger brother Guy, who was said to be a handsome man as well as quite a passable lover.

So while Baldwin d’Ibelin went to Constantinople to see Emperor Manuel, Amalrik de Lusignan was in France to fetch his brother Guy.

When Baldwin d’Ibelin, after many trials, returned to Jerusalem, he found that Sibylla had transferred her affections to the newly arrived Guy de Lusignan.

The difference between having Guy de Lusignan rather than Baldwin d’Ibelin as king of Jerusalem would have been like darkness versus light or fire versus water. Without realizing it himself, Saladin had shortened the path to his ultimate victory.

As far as the Knights Templar were concerned, the defeat at Marj Ayyoun was also of great significance, since Grand Master Odo de Saint Armand was one of the survivors and was taken prisoner after the battle. Normally all Hospitallers and Templars were beheaded as soon as they landed in captivity. Their Rule forbade them to be ransomed, so they had no financial value as prisoners. They were also the Christians’ best knights, and from Saladin’s point of view they were better off beheaded than exchanged for Saracen prisoners, which was the other possibility besides ransom.

With a Grand Master, however, Saladin thought the situation was different. The Grand Masters of both the Hospitallers and Templars held all power in their hands; their brothers in the order had to obey their decisions, without question. A Grand Master might be valuable if they could convince him to cooperate.

But Saladin got nowhere with Odo de Saint Armand. The Grand Master referred merely to the Rule, which forbade ransoms for Templar knights, and so Odo de Saint Armand’s captivity in Damascus was brief. Within a year he was dead, though no one knew the cause.

It was most likely that the new Grand Master of the Templar order would be Arnoldo de Torroja, who held the next highest position as Jerusalem’s Master.

Because power in the Holy Land was divided among the court in Jerusalem, the two spiritual orders of knights, and the barons and landowners, it was of great importance who became Grand Master, and what sort of warrior, spiritual leader, and negotiator he was. It was even more important, of course, that he held a conciliatory attitude toward the Saracens, for the sake of peace in the Holy Land.

Arnoldo de Torroja had made a long career as a member of the Knights Templar in Aragon and Provence before he came to the Holy Land. He was much more of a businessman and wielder of power than his warlike predecessor Odo de Saint Armand.

Looking at these potential power shifts from Saladin’s point of view, the royal power in Jerusalem seemed on its way to landing in the clutches of an ignorant adventurer who would be little threat on the battlefield. And the mighty Order of the Knights Templar had in Arnoldo de Torroja acquired a leader who was more a man of compromise and negotiation than his predecessor, who was more like Count Raymond of Tripoli.

For Arn de Gothia, master of Gaza, Arnoldo de Torroja’s elevation to Grand Master had a more immediate effect. Arn was summoned to Jerusalem in order to assume without delay the office of Jerusalem’s Master.

For the two Cistercian monks, Father Louis and Brother Pietro, who at this time arrived at the center of the world as the special envoys of the Holy Father in Rome, their encounter with Jerusalem was a mixture of violent disappointments and pleasant surprises. But almost nothing was as they had expected.

Like all newly arrived Franks, secular or ecclesiastical, they’d imagined the City of Cities to be a wonderfully peaceful place with streets of gold and white marble. What they found was an indescribable tumult of teeming crowds and jabbered languages and narrow streets filled mostly with garbage. Like all Cistercians they had an image of their military brother organization the Knights Templar as a group of uneducated roughnecks who could scarcely spell their way through the Pater Noster in Latin. What they found first was Jerusalem’s Master, who addressed them in Latin. And almost immediately they all fell into an interesting discourse about Aristotle while waiting for the Grand Master whom they had come to meet in person.

The rooms of Jerusalem’s Master reminded them a good deal of a Cistercian monastery. There was none of the worldly and sometimes ungodly ostentation which they had seen at other places in the Templars’ quarter of the city. Instead there was a long arcade with a view over the city, much like a part of every Cistercian cloister, and all the walls were white and without sinful pictures. Their host served them an excellent meal despite the fact that there was nothing that originated from four-footed animals or other items that Cistercians could not eat.

Father Louis was a clear-sighted man, schooled from a very young age by the best teachers in the Cistercians at Cîteaux; for many years he had been the Cistercian order’s envoy from the Holy Father. So he was rather amazed how little he actually knew about the so-called Jerusalem’s Master, a title that seemed to Father Louis utterly grotesque in its presumption, and so ill suited to the man he assumed he would meet. They had told him that Arn de Gothia was a warrior of especially high repute, that he was the victor of the battle of Mont Gisard, when the Templars despite great inferiority in numbers had defeated Saladin himself. So Father Louis had probably expected someone comparable to the Roman commander Belisarius, in any case a military man who could barely speak of anything besides war. But if it were not for a number of white scars on the face and hands of this Arn de Gothia, Father Louis would have thought from his gentle demeanor and conciliatory manner of speaking that he was no different from a brother of Cîteaux. He couldn’t help plying Arn a bit with questions, and thought that he better understood at least one side of the matter when he learned that this Templar knight had actually been brought up in a cloister. Then it was like seeing the dream of blessed Saint Bernard fully realized: the warrior in the Holy War who was at the same time a monk. Father Louis had never imagined that he would ever encounter this dream in the flesh.

Nor could he avoid noticing that his host ate only bread and drank only water despite all the other food and drink that were on the table, provided for the pleasure of his guests. This high Templar knight was thus doing penance for something. But no matter how much Father Louis wanted to learn more about the matter, this first meeting was hardly the right time to inquire. He was the envoy of the Holy Father, and had brought a papal bull that might not be readily accepted. Besides, these Templar knights were known for their pride; the man who was Grand Master, whom they would soon meet, apparently viewed himself as next in rank only to the Holy Father himself. Which meant that the so-called Jerusalem’s Master would be considered no less than an archbishop. It would be reasonable to assume that such men did not view an abbé as possessing any great power. Nor could they be expected to understand the position of an abbé who worked directly under the Holy Father, acting as his advisor and envoy.

When the Grand Master himself at long last joined their meeting, all remnants of the meal had been cleared away and they were having a pleasant discussion about the divisions of philosophy into knowledge, learning, and faith. They were also talking about ideas as something that always had to be manifested in material objects; they could not exist solely in the higher pure spheres. This was precisely the sort of conversation that Father Louis never would have imagined having with a Templar knight.

Arnoldo de Torroja apologized for his tardiness by saying that he had been summoned by the king of Jerusalem. He also told them that he and Arn de Gothia would need to leave soon to meet with the king again. However, he did not want to allow the entire first evening to pass without meeting his Cistercian guests and hearing about their mission. According to Father Louis’s first impression, this Grand Master was a man like those he might have met among the emperor’s ambassadors in Rome, a full-fledged diplomat and negotiator. So he was no coarse Roman Belisarius either.

Father Louis thought it was a little awkward to proceed at once to the sensitive topic they had come to discuss, but his hosts did not leave him much choice. It would not be proper to do nothing but chat about superfluous matters at their first meeting, and then return the next day to present solemn decrees.

So he explained the matter directly and without any unnecessary digressions. His two hosts listened attentively, without interrupting and without revealing their thoughts by any change in expression.

Archbishop William of Tyrus had traveled from the Holy Land to the Third Lateran Council in Rome, and there he had presented serious charges against both the Knights Templar and the Hospitallers.

According to Archbishop William, the Knights Templar were in certain respects consistently counteracting the Holy Roman Church. If anyone was excommunicated in the Holy Land, he could be buried by the Knights Templar. And before his death he could even be admitted into their order. If a bishop imposed an interdict upon a whole city so that all the sinners were removed from the care of the Church, then the Knights Templar could send their own priests to take care of all churchly services. All these abuses, which gave the impression that the power of the Church was weak or even ridiculous, arose from the fact that the Knights Templar did not answer to any bishop and thus could not be excommunicated or even punished by the patriarch of Jerusalem. What made the situation especially serious, of course, was the fact that both Templars and Hospitallers accepted payment for these services. The Third Lateran Council and the Holy Father Alexander III had therefore decided that all such business transactions must cease immediately. However, Archbishop William had found no hearing for his proposal that various punishments should be imposed on the two orders of knights for these offences against the Church, which had supremacy over all people on the earth.

Father Louis brought with him a papal bull affixed with the Pope’s seal. He now took it out and laid it on the empty table before them. There in writing stood all that he had just explained. He now needed to know what answer he should take back to the Holy Father.

“Say that the Order of the Knights Templar from the moment we received word from the Holy Father, shall yield to his edict,” replied Arnoldo de Torroja gently. “This is valid from the moment that I, the Grand Master, pronounced our submission. We shall see to it that this new order is implemented as soon as possible. It may take time, but we do not intend to cause any unnecessary delays. Our decision is already in effect because I have pronounced it so, and I don’t think that my friend and brother Arn de Gothia has any different view in this matter, do you, Arn?”

“No, absolutely not,” replied Arn in the same calm tone. “We Knights Templar conduct all sorts of business, and business is important to support the expense of an ongoing and costly war. I will gladly tell you more of this matter tomorrow, Father Louis. But to conduct business transactions relating to ecclesiastical matters conflicts with our rules and is called simony. Personally I view the business you spoke of, Father, as simony. So I can fully understand both Archbishop William’s charges and the decision of the Holy Father.”

“But then I don’t understand…” said Father Louis, as relieved by the swift acceptance of the decision as he was astonished by it. “Why did this sin occur if you both so clearly take exception to it?”

“Our previous Grand Master Odo de Saint Armand, now blessed in Paradise, had a different perspective on these matters than the two of us,” replied Arnoldo de Torroja.

“But couldn’t you as highly-placed brothers have criticized your Grand Master for this shameful act if you were so against it?” asked Father Louis in amazement.

He was met only by meditative smiles from the two men, but received no answer.

Arn summoned a knight and instructed him to show Father Louis and Brother Pietro, who had not said a word during the conversation, to their lodgings. Then he excused himself by saying that the king wanted to see both the Grand Master and Jerusalem’s Master at once. He assured them that on the following day he would be a better host. With that the Grand Master rose and blessed his two spiritual guests, to both the surprise and resentment of Father Louis.

The two Cistercians were led to their quarters for the night, but not without an initial blunder, since they were first led to a room intended for worldly guests with Saracen tile patterns and fountains. But then they were guided to the proper lodgings and were each given a whitewashed cell of the same type they normally occupied.

Arnoldo de Torroja and Arn hastened together to the king’s night quarters. They had little opportunity to talk about the papal bull on the way, but they were still agreed on the matter. It would be a drain on their income, yet it was good to be freed of this business which they both regarded as extremely dubious. So much the better then that they had been given direct instruction from the Holy Father himself to throw in the face of all those who might be displeased.

The king’s private rooms were small and dim, because he was unable to move or see very well. He awaited them sitting on his curtained throne, where he sat behind blue muslin so that from the outside he was visible only as a shadow. It was whispered that he had now lost both his hands.

In the room there was only one servant, a huge Nubian who was both deaf and dumb and sat on some cushions next to the wall with his gaze fixed on his half-concealed lord so that he could intervene at the slightest sign, which only he and the king understood.

Arnoldo de Torroja and Arn entered, walking side by side, and bowed to the king without a word. Then they sat down on two Egyptian leather stools before the unusual throne. The king spoke to them in a rather high-pitched voice; he was only in his twenties.

“I’m pleased that the two foremost brothers of the Knights Templar have heeded my summons,” he began and then broke off coughing and made a sign that his guests didn’t understand. The Nubian slave rushed over and arranged something behind the blue curtain though they couldn’t see what he did. They waited in silence.

“Although I’m farther from my death than some people both believe and hope,” the king went on, “I have no lack of troubles. You are both the backbone in the defense of the Holy Land, the Templar knights, and I wish to discuss two matters with you with no other ears present. So I shall speak in a language that in other circumstances I would have phrased in better terms. Is that all right with you, Templar knights?”

“Absolutely splendid, Sire,” replied Arnoldo de Torroja.

“Good,” said the king, then coughed briefly again but made no sign to his slave and continued at once. “The first question deals with the new patriarch of Jerusalem. The second question is about our military situation. I would like to take up the question about the patriarch first. Soon a new patriarch will be appointed, since Amalrik de Nesle is dying. It seems to be a matter for the church, but if I understand my mother Agnes correctly, it is actually more her concern, or rather mine. We have two candidates: Heraclius, archbishop of Caesarea, and William, archbishop of Tyrus. Let us weigh the arguments for and against each. I have understood that William is the enemy of the Knights Templar, but he is a godly man whose honor no one doubts. Heraclius is, if I may be quite honest now that no one can hear us, a rogue of a type that is rather common here in our land, a gone-astray choir boy or the like, and he is also known for his sinful life. And he is my mother’s lover, one of many, naturally. But he doesn’t seem to be your enemy; on the contrary. As you see, there are many less noble weights in the balance trays that we have before us. What is your opinion in this matter?”

It was obvious that Arnoldo de Torroja should answer, and equally obvious that he had a hard time replying with complete candor. And so he launched into a long harangue about life, God’s inscrutable will, and other things that merely meant that he was talking as he tried to work out what he should actually say. Arn was astonished by the unfortunate young king, who in spite of his frail voice exuded such an unusual power and decisiveness. And yet he suffered from an illness that meant he would soon die, and it caused him always to hide himself from whoever was in his presence.

“So, to sum up,” said Arnoldo de Torroja, finally coming to a conclusion. “It’s a good thing for the Knights Templar to have a patriarch who is our friend, and a bad thing to have one who is our enemy. At the same time it’s a good thing for the kingdom of Jerusalem to have a man of honor and faith as the supreme guardian over the True Cross and God’s Grave. And a sin to have a sinner in the same responsible post. What God might think in this matter is of course not hard to surmise.”

“Assuredly, but now it’s a matter of a higher power than God, namely my mother Agnes,” replied the king dryly. “I know that it’s actually the council of all the archbishops in the Holy Land that will decide and vote on this matter. But nowadays many of these men of God are easy to buy. So the decision is de facto mine, or yours and mine, or my mother’s. What I want to know is whether you Templar knights are absolutely opposed to one or the other of these two. Well?”

“A sinner who is well disposed toward us or an honest man of God who is against us, that is no easy choice, Sire,” replied Arnoldo de Torroja evasively. Had he been able to see into the future he would have said something else with all his might.

“Fine,” said the king with a sigh. “Then it looks like we’ll have a very unusual man as patriarch, since you’re leaving the decision to my mother. If God is as good as you Templars say, He will undoubtedly send His bolts of lightning against this man every time he approaches a slave boy or a married woman, or an ass for that matter. So! The second thing I wanted to talk about was the situation in the war. In this case everyone lies to me, as you may well understand; it sometimes takes me a year to grasp what has happened and not happened. For example, regarding what really happened at my only victory in the wars that I myself have waged. First I was the great victor at Mont Gisard; there were reliable witnesses who saw Saint George riding above me in a cloud and other such foolishness. Now I know that it was you, Arn de Gothia, who was the victor. Am I not right in this?”

“The truth is…” Arn replied hesitantly, since he had received a direct question from the king and Arnoldo de Torroja could not answer in his stead, “that the Templar knights in that battle conquered three or four thousand of Saladin’s best troops. It is also true that Jerusalem’s secular army defeated five hundred.”

“Is that your answer, Arn de Gothia?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“And who led the Templar knights in that battle?”

“I did, with God’s help, Sire.”

“Good. That’s what I thought. An advantage with some Templars, and you are clearly one of them, Arn de Gothia, is that they answer truthfully. I gladly would live my final years in that manner, but that will hardly be granted me. So! Tell me briefly something about the military situation!”

“It’s a complicated situation, Sire—” Arnoldo de Torroja began but was instantly cut off by the king.

“Forgive me, dear Grand Master, but Jerusalem’s Master is at the moment the order’s highest military commander, is he not?”

“Yes, Sire, that is true,” replied Arnoldo de Torroja.

“Good!” said the king with an audible sigh. “God, if only I had such men as you around me, men who speak the truth. Then it is no doubt proper that I ask this question of Arn de Gothia, my dear Grand Master, without violating all your numerous rules and honor and glory?”

“That is fully in order, Sire,” said Arnoldo de Torroja somewhat tensely.

“Now then!” the king said, peremptorily.

“The situation can be described as follows, Sire,” Arn began uncertainly. “We have the absolute worst opponent in Christendom against us now, worse than Zenki, worse than Nur al-Din. Saladin has largely united all the Saracens against us, and he is a skilled military leader. He has lost once, when Your Majesty won at Mont Gisard. Otherwise he has won every significant battle. We have to reinforce the Christian side in all of Outremer, otherwise we are defeated, or will be locked inside fortresses and cities, and we can’t stay there indefinitely. That’s the situation.”

“Do you share this opinion, Grand Master?” the king asked harshly.

“Yes, Sire. The situation is just as Jerusalem’s Master has described it. We must have reinforcements from our home countries. Saladin is something entirely different from what we’ve had to deal with previously.”

“Well! Then so it shall be. We shall send an envoy to our homelands, to the emperor of Germany, the king of England, and the king of France. Would you be so kind as to participate in this mission, Grand Master?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Even if Grand Master Roger des Moulins from the Hospitallers is also included?”

“Yes, Sire. Roger des Moulins is an extraordinary man.”

“And with the new patriarch of Jerusalem, even if he turns out to be someone with whom you should be cautious in the night?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Well, that’s excellent. So it shall be. One more question: who is the best commander of all the secular knights in Outremer?”

“Count Raymond of Tripoli and then Baldwin d’Ibelin, Sire,” replied Arnoldo de Torroja quickly.

“And who is the worst?” the king shot back with equal speed. “Could it possibly be my sister’s dear husband Guy de Lusignan?”

“To compare Guy de Lusignan with either of the two men I mentioned would be like comparing David and Goliath, Sire,” said Arnoldo de Torroja with a slightly ironic bow. This made the king pensive and silent for a moment.

“So you think that Guy de Lusignan would beat Count Raymond, Grand Master?” he asked in amusement when he was finished thinking.

“I didn’t say that, Sire. As the Scripture says, Goliath was the greatest warrior and David merely an inexperienced boy. Without God’s intervention Goliath would win in a thousand out of a thousand battles against David. If God supports Guy de Lusignan as much as He supported David, then Guy de Lusignan would of course be invincible.”