Widow of Jerusalem: A Medieval Mystery (21 page)

U
ntil the discovery
and translation of this manuscript, the latest in a series of chronicles preserved at an abbey in western Ireland, the full tale of Queen Isabelle of Jerusalem and Scarlet the Dwarf had never been revealed. Isabelle, in the various histories of the Third Crusade both contemporaneous and modern, had been relegated to a position and a series of marriages to secure that position, with nothing about her actual character except that she was both beautiful and
gente,
a description attributed to Henry of Champagne, perhaps spuriously.

It is worth noting that these histories have been written by men, with more attention paid to events than to personalities, and more to the personalities of men than to those of women. One must therefore take the following comments of Runciman with a grain of salt: “Alone of the ladies of the Royal House of Jerusalem she is a shadowy figure of whose personality nothing has survived. Her marriage and her very existence were of high importance. Had she held political ambitions she could have been a power in the land; but she let herself be passed from husband to husband without consideration of her personal wishes. We know that she was beautiful; but we must conclude that she was feckless and weak.” Given her age and the circumstances surrounding the first two marriages, it is hardly fair to judge her for not asserting any ambitions. In fact, the very lack of assertion may have been a valid choice. Her reported behavior after Conrad’s death certainly demonstrated her political savvy and grasp of a potentially desperate situation, and her subsequent decision to marry Henry helped to consolidate the bickering forces of the diminishing Crusade and secure the peace treaty with Saladin. Her behavior after Henry’s death seems exemplary, and her marriage to Amaury appears to have been her choice, rather than a “passing on,” especially given the local pressure to take Ralph Falconberg as her husband instead.

The only previous historical reference found to Scarlet was in
The Chronicle of Ernoul and the Continuations of William of Tyre,
one of the contemporaneous—or at least near contemporaneous—accounts of the era. He is mentioned solely in connection with the death of Henry of Champagne, and even here the sources are confusing. There are three differing accounts of the event, found in what have been designated as the C, D, and E manuscripts of the chronicle. In one, Henry falls through an unbarred window while meeting a delegation of Pisans, Scarlet clinging to him. Both are killed. In a second, Henry leans on the bars while reviewing his troops. The bars give way, he falls, and Scarlet throws himself after him in grief. Had the dwarf not done so, Henry might have survived, but Scarlet landed on him. In the third, Scarlet was his valet and was holding Henry’s towel when the latter fell through an unbarred window, dragging the dwarf with him. In this version, Scarlet survived. Ironically, Henry had previously ordered that the window have bars installed, concerned as he was that children played near it.

The motives for the killing of Conrad of Montferrat have long been a mystery. The historians of the time generally blamed the Assassins, but modern historians tend to doubt that theory. Conrad was known to be opposed to Richard and was therefore more likely to be favored by the locals. The killers had been in Tyre long before the seizure of

Sinan’s ships, and the timing of the killing, just two days after Conrads election to the throne by the council of barons, suggests strongly that the two events were related, as has now been confirmed by Theophilos’s account.

We also learn from this that Theophilos was one of the sources for
L”Estoire de Guerre Saint,
the poetic recounting of Richard’s travels by the jongleur Ambroise. This also seems to be in turn the source of the
Itinerarium Pereginorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi,
the Latin prose translation. Ambroise s account is noticeable for its near deification of King Richard, a feeling clearly not shared by Theophilos.

The troubadour Blondel pops up in the stories of Richard s capture by the German Emperor while returning from the Holy Land. According to legend, Blondel located the missing king by serenading the castle in which he was imprisoned. Richard responded by singing the next verse, and Blondel helped negotiate his ransom. Richard, of course, died a few years later from a crossbow bolt.

The truce negotiated by Amaury lasted, with the occasional minor interruption, for several years. Amaury ruled Cyprus and Jerusalem wisely, by all accounts, setting up a written constitution in Cyprus that consolidated the power of the monarchy. Of the arranged marriages of the children of Amaury and Isabelle, only one came to fruition due to the early deaths of two of Amaury’s boys. However, that marriage, between the eventual King Henry I of Cyprus and Alice of Champagne, led to the Lusignan dynasty that was to last in Cyprus for over two centuries, longer in fact than the existence of the European rule in the Holy Land.

Amaury survived one assassination attempt, suspected to be the work of Ralph Falconberg. Ralph escaped responsibility once again, but prudently decided to leave for Tripoli. Hugh Falconberg was last seen heading for Constantinople to seek his fortune after it fell to the armies of the Fourth Crusade, and William seems to have vanished.

Amaury did not last as long as the truce he had arranged. He died in 1205, and Isabelle reportedly died soon after. The crown of Jerusalem passed to Marie of Montferrat, the daughter of Conrad and

Isabelle.

She was thirteen years old.