The Spymaster's Protection (52 page)

It could have been so different had the Franks possessed
better leadership. Lucien mentally shook his head in regret. “We have been
outnumbered from the beginning, but we are now fighting as we should have been
all along, from behind the safety of our well-fortified walls. And I have seen
the sultan be merciful. If we are defeated, I believe he will not slaughter us
the way we slaughtered the inhabitants within these walls when we first
conquered the city.”

But it was a great sorrow to him that Jerusalem would in all
likelihood be lost to the Christians. For well over a decade he had fought to
keep it free from Muslim rule. Eighty years had passed since it had passed into
Christian hands, and Lucien grimly wondered if it would ever belong to his kind
again.

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At dawn the following day, the Saracen army attacked the city
between David’s Tower and Saint Stephen’s Gate. The rising sun greeted the men
manning the walls with a shower of Muslim arrows. Missiles struck the stout
stone walls moments later. The Saracens bombard the gates of the city as well.
The Christian defenders returned with counter-barrages.

Lucien led a group of newly anointed knights on horseback
through one of the lesser gates on a swift and furious sortie that seriously
damaged several of Saladin’s siege engines. Both sides kept up the fanatical
assault for nearly a sennight; Saladin battering away at the walls, while the
Christians repelled them from the parapets and mounted flash raids. The
countermeasures took their toll on the Saracens. Lucien discovered through his
men outside the walls that Saladin lost several prominent senior officers.

By the twenty-fifth of September, Saladin called off the
attack. The Christians watched from the ramparts as the siege engines were
dismantled. A rousing cheer went up along the walls. To nearly everyone, it
seemed the assault was over. Lucien and Balian were not among those cheering.
Lucien’s spies had discovered that Saladin was tunneling beneath the weaker
towers. If successful, their mining would eventually bring down one or more
towers, and with that the connecting walls.

Their skepticism was understood when the following morning the
Muslims reappeared beyond the northern gates of Jerusalem.

Saladin had a formidable army and still over a hundred siege
engines. The sultan’s objective was clearly to breach the walls of Jerusalem,
if not from the top, then from fires set inside the tunnels lined with timber.
From his new siege position, he attacked relentlessly, finally finding a
weakened part of wall near the Postern of Saint Mary Magdalene. Mangonels
hurled boulders and naft, at the walls and gates day and night. The Greek fire
missiles ignited blazes throughout the city, and people hurried frantically to
extinguish them before they could spread.

From his defensive position near one of the Christian army’s
own siege engines, Lucien was amazed to see a new machine brought before the
walls of Jerusalem. It was a powerful counterweight-throwing machine that they
eventually learned was called a trebuchet. With the far-reaching contacts and
superior battle strategies Saladin had at his command, it should not have
surprised Lucien that the sultan had access to such a new weapon.

While his machines battered the walls of the ancient city, the
sultan’s miners continued, unabated, their underground work. Armored engineers
surged forth beneath the protection of large shields and a flurry of arrows.
Once a ditch was dug, they got beneath the wall or tower and began their
destructive toil. Long held foundations began to weaken and crumble, bit by
bit.

Within a sennight, one tunnel, supported by wooden props, was
set aflame. The wood burned like kindling and brought down a long section of
the outer wall. The ensuing fire was so intense, it hindered all attempts by
the Christians to take out the diggers and launch an effective counterassault
on the siege machines raining down rocks upon their heads.

In a desperate attempt, every mounted man in the city rode out
through the Jehosaphat Gate to try to flank the Muslim forces. This time the
sortie failed, beaten back by the sultan’s cavalry.

The breach in the northeastern wall that the sappers and their
fire had created became an enormous problem for the Christians, as well as for
the Saracens. The former were hard-pressed to find enough men willing to guard
the opening, but Saladin did not have an easy time seizing control of it,
either. Twice he was driven back from breaking through to the city beyond.

On the final day of September, Balian d’Ibelin and a small
group of men, including Lucien de Aubric rode into Saladin’s camp under a white
flag of truce. For two days, they were denied an audience with the sultan.
Finally, on October 2, the great desert lord agreed to talk to them. Seated on
cushions on the floor of the sultan’s war pavilion, Lucien and the ex-lord of
Nablus accepted the libation offered them and carefully scrutinized their
adversary’s mood.

“I had hoped both of you would honor your word and not raise
arms against me since I granted you your lives and your freedom at Hattin,”
Saladin began, frowning with displeasure as he eyed the two men across from
him. The rest of the Christian delegation had not been invited into the
sultan’s spacious tent. “I received your missive, Lord Ibelin, telling me of
your intent to defend Jerusalem, and I understand from General Gökböri, de
Aubric, that you warned him you would defend your fellow Christians, but….”

“But we could do nothing else,” Lord Ibelin dared to
interrupt. “Honor and duty demanded we not turn our backs on our fellow
citizens.”

Lucien turned the conversation to the true intent of their
negotiations. “I understand you and your emirs are debating what to do with the
city now that you have breached our walls. It has come to my attention that
some are in favor of storming Jerusalem and slaughtering all inside.”

The sultan gave the ex-Templar a small smile of begrudging
respect. “Your intelligence is as sound as ever, de Aubric. Would that you had
aligned yourself with your mother’s people. I would have welcomed a man of your
capabilities.” Saladin shrugged and waved away a persistent insect.
“Nevertheless, I have promised to take Jerusalem by storm, and as surely you
both know, I am a man of my word.”

Seated nearly elbow to elbow beside Lucien, Balian d’Ibelin
stiffened and glared at his adversary. “If that is truly your intent, the
garrison inside Jerusalem is prepared to slaughter their own families, their
animals, and the 5,000 Muslim prisoners that remain in our hands.”

Lucien was prepared for Balian’s warning. The two men had
discussed the need for it if Saladin threatened to destroy Jerusalem and all
inside it. His face remained expressionless as his friend delivered his
dangerous threat. In the back of his mind, Lucien doubted he could ever lift a
hand to harm Gabrielle. Quite frankly, it was a threat neither he nor Balian
would carry out, but the sultan had to believe that they would. General Gökböri
had not joined Saladin for the negotiations. For that, Lucien was grateful. It
would have been impossible to sit across from the man and pretend he intended
to kill his daughter.

As planned, Balian added the final threat. “Our brethren
inside the city have also agreed to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque where the
Templars have established their headquarters should you decide to enter and
kill every citizen within. Thus we shall die gloriously or surrender like
gentlemen. The decision of which it shall be is yours, my lord.”

Lucien thought that Balian’s threat demonstrated what surely
must have been some of the fanaticism of the first Crusaders. Saladin could not
afford to repeat the holocaust of 1099, nor could he afford the destruction of
one of the holiest structures in all of Islam.

Assessing the sincerity in Lord d’Ibelin’s fierce expression,
Saladin sighed in resignation and finally set down the terms for the surrender
of Jerusalem. The non-Latins could remain in the city, but the Franks had to
leave. The sultan demanded that every man pay ten deniers, every woman five,
and every child one as a ransom. Money was haggled over for another hour until
at last it was also decided that a lump sum of 30,000 bezants was to be paid
for all those inside who could not afford the ransom. It was estimated that
there were over five thousand poor within the city. The Christians had forty
days to raise the ransom money and deliver it.

When Balian and Lucien returned to the city to report the
terms of surrender, there was strong protest, especially from the few members
remaining of the military orders. The Templars, in particular, were adamant
about not spending their treasure on those too poor to pay the ransom. Many of
the Christian churchmen were in strong disagreement over assisting the poor,
also, as were the wealthier Christians within Jerusalem’s walls.

In addition to their lives, the Franks had been allowed to
take any property they could move with them when they left the city. Many began
to flee within a day of the surrender. The exodus grew to a steady stream of
people, animals, and wagons departing through the now open gates, flooding the
roads leading away from the holy city. By the time the forty-day deadline
expired, there were still 15,000 non-Latin people in Jerusalem; citizens unable
to pay the ransom and exit through the Saracen guarded gates.

Saladin and his emirs were so disgusted with the failure of
the Christians to aid their brethren that the great Muslim lord, himself, paid
the ransom of many of the poor. Though he had been urged by his commanders to
confiscate the wealth flowing out of the city, Saladin refused to break his
word. Every man, woman, and child who wanted to leave the city was allowed to,
with their possessions and without harm. The reacquisition of Jerusalem spilled
significantly less blood than its initial conquest.

Once inside the Holy City, Saladin reclaimed the buildings and
landmarks for Islam. Refitting structures for religious worship was a priority.
As soon as Patriarch Heraclius left the city with a small caravan of gold and
valuables, his palace was given to the Sufis, the Muslim mystics, as a convent.
The Hospitaller complex became a religious college, and the Temple was
completely cleansed of all evidence of its foreign inhabitation. Scrubbed clean
with rose water from Damascus, the entire temple complex was reconsecrated as
the Al Asqa Mosque.

On the Muslim Sabbath, Friday, October 9, 1187 Saladin joined
his officers to pray at the legendary site. A large Christian cross was hauled
down from the Temple and carried through the city upside down by the Muslim
victors as a symbol of conquest.

The remaining Templars departed the city that had been their
headquarters since their inception, acting as escorts and guards for groups of
refugees. Within a week they were happily welcomed into Tyre, while the
displaced citizens they had escorted were refused entrance and made to set up
camp in a tent city outside the walls of the port town.

In Jerusalem, Queen Sibylla and a handful of noble men and
women, who had remained behind despite the evacuation, stayed to bear witness
to Saladin’s triumphant march into the city. Sibylla implored the sultan to let
her go to her captive husband. Her request was swiftly granted, and she was
escorted to Nablus to see the dethroned king. Several more noblewomen were
treated similarly. Their requests for the release of their husbands and sons
were granted.

Lucien and Gabrielle also remained within the city, in quiet
seclusion at her old residence, which had been vacated by Lady Silvia. Within a
week of Saladin’s arrival, they were summoned back to the royal palace for an
audience with Muzaffar al Din Gökböri.

Dressed in her finest Muslim attire, Gabrielle was so nervous,
she was amazed her legs carried her through the gates of the vacated palace and
across the tiled courtyard to the general’s private quarters. If not for the
firm, steady forearm Lucien offered her, she was certain she would have
collapsed in a heap at the emir’s doorstep. Though she had met the Blue Wolf
before, she was now meeting him with the knowledge that he was her father. She
wondered if she would please him, and if he would accept her fully as his
daughter. Certainly the man she had known as her father for over a score of
years had not. Though her mother’s love had sustained her for the first years
of her life, she had always longed for a loving, caring father. She probably
did not need one now that she had the wonderful man beside her, but
nevertheless, the expectancy of finally meeting her true father seemed like the
fulfillment of a long-buried dream.

“Gabrielle, it will be all right,” Lucien tried to reassure
her as they were greeted and directed by a servant to wait in a luxuriously
redecorated chamber.

Open doorways and windows let in fragrant autumn breezes that
ruffled the sheer silk panels of gossamer cloth hanging, draped, from the
ceiling. From the moment they had stepped through the iron-banded gates of the
palace, Gabrielle had noticed that everything had been scrubbed clean of any
remaining hint of the Christian occupation. She had lived here for weeks, and
yet she barely recognized the place. The redecoration was not unpleasant,
simply sad. The Christians’ eighty-year plus presence in Jerusalem was being
obliterated as if it had never existed.

Lucien had told Gabrielle that the general wanted them to
travel to Irbil with him to visit, possibly to live. She had mixed feelings
about his offer. She knew Lucien could not remain in Palestine without being in
jeopardy from Gerald de Ridefort. And like her, he had nowhere to go in the
West any longer. They had to go somewhere that they could be together safely,
free to marry and, God willing, raise a family. But what would it be like to
live among the Saracens; to truly become part of their culture? While they
would not be forced to give up their religion and beliefs, they would probably
live as exiles, leaving behind friends and familiar customs. But was that not
how Gabrielle had lived the past five years of her life anyway; among Arab
friends and co-workers? Would it truly be so different? And all that really
mattered was that she would be with Lucien.