The Life of Godfrey
being an account, related to an old acquaintance, on how he came to be in Jerusalem and what devices brought him there.
Chapter One – In the Beginning
Baron Godfrey had been in the middle of a particularly amusing memory when his steward knocked on the doorframe of his study and knocked his master out of reverie. It had been an old memory, from when he had first come to Jerusalem. Something about a younger version of Raymond and himself getting lost in the Armenian quarter in the dead of night. Palm wine might have been involved. It usually was, in those days, Godfrey thought to himself, stretching his long legs out under his desk and pondering the ledger before him. And now where was he? Elbow deep in account books. Rents, taxes, tithes – the monies owed were endless.
But there had been a knocking. Godfrey turned around to see his steward Yussif patiently standing in the doorway, waiting for his master to acknowledge him.
"A rider comes, Sayyid, from Jerusalem," the steward offered.
"How many with them?" Godfrey asked, shifting in his chair to glance at his servant more carefully. Men didn't journey alone across the open desert, unless in desperate need. There would be more than one rider, as Yussif said.
"Five, Sayyid. Almaric thinks the leader a woman. Shall I prepare a room for her?"
"Audemande," Godfrey said softly to himself, smiling a little and wondering what business the Little Dove of Jerusalem might have concocted to bring herself out to dusty little Ibelin. He didn't doubt Almaric's eyes, and there were few women who'd come through all that desert just to see him. In younger days, perhaps more. But as Almaric was fond of saying, this was a dry and dusty place. "Prepare a room for the lady, Yussif, and see that the kitchens have…. something better for dinner than our usual fare."
"Of course, Sayyid," Yussif said, bowing his way out of the room and scurrying off to shout his commands at his flock, sending the little birds scurrying this way and that.
Godfrey took another look at the ledger and sighed. Figures would have to wait for another time, especially now that he had guests to prepare for. The lanky lord of Ibelin pulled himself up from his chair, stretching his hands up so that his fingers almost brushed the ceiling of his monastic little study. He could hear horses in the courtyard below – presumably the riders were already here at his gates.
They waited below, the armed companions in short rows behind the heavily cloaked woman they followed, a lady who removed the veil that hid her face when the lord came down to greet them, her lips breaking into a brief smile as she saw him.
"My lady Audemande," the Lord of Ibelin said, trying to wipe the ink off of his hands so he might help the lady off her horse.
"My lord Godfrey. I have not caught you at work, I hope," Audemande said with a jest in her voice, looking at the inky rag he held in his hands.
"Work for the lord of Ibelin? Never! I was composing a chanson to the beauty of my fields and the lamentable drain they put on my purse," Godfrey quipped.
"Your account books again, I think," she judged with an appraising eye. "No work ever made a man more heart-sore. We have want of wit like yours in Jerusalem, my lord; why do you not attend the city more often?" The Little Dove asked, smiling like she only did when she wanted to impress Godfrey.
"The city makes me more heart-sore than my account books, madam; besides, what use does the court of Guy the Fool have for wit?" It was a joke he would hardly have dared to make in Jerusalem, but he sincerely doubted the count of Ascalon and Jaffa, husband to his king's sister, would have spies here. He was not so important that he needed watching.
Aude made a sound of mock pain, closing her eyes as if she had been wounded. "Oh, speak not to me of Guy the Fool! The day when he is actually king will be counted as a sad day in heaven and a holy day in hell."
"Good, then, that he is only playing like one for the present. I would hate to see the Holy Days of Hell. And how does our real king, Lady Poet?" Godfrey asked, now completely serious. Baldwin's health was a delicate thing, delicate enough that while they might joke about Guy of Lusignan being king for the present, the threat of him becoming king in the future should remain far too real for jokes.
"Well enough. He sent me here as a present to me," the court trobaritz said, following her host inside and sitting down in the chair the servant pulled out for her, settling her travel robes over the arms and accepting a goblet of watered wine.
"Fine present, one he doesn't have to pay for. I shall have to speak to him about that; entertaining a lady is not cheap."
"Bite your tongue! I come to Ibelin to get away from pomp, not surrounded by it more," Aude shot back. "I expect no grand shows of hospitality here. Which is why I continue to come," she finished.
Godfrey smiled, the look of a harangued father putting up with the caprice of his daughter or -- heaven forbid such a thing would come to pass between them – as a husband tolerating the whims of his wife. "And what was the king doing giving presents for?" the Lord wanted to know, accepting his own goblet and making himself comfortable.
"My nineteenth birthday!" Aude said proudly, as though it should have been the most obvious thing in the world. "I am well on my way to becoming an old maid; it is something that should be celebrated!"
Godfrey rolled his eyes. "Old at only nineteen? How hard it is for women. So Baldwin sends you to Ibelin to flaunt your youth at me, is that it?" he asked, smiling through his mock anger.
"He sends me to Ibelin to get work done," Aude clarified, smiling at the anger she knew could not be genuine. "The City fails to inspire me these past several months; the king wished I should have a holiday."
"And how long does my lady intend to prolong this…holiday?"Godfrey asked, thinking wretchedly of the horrid account book and the tradesmen to be paid and the cost, the cost, always the cost. What a clerk I become in my old age!
"Half of the month, I think. A fortnight. Or whenever my muse, fickle creature, decides to return to my side and help me," Aude declared, taking a sip from her goblet. How much like Sybilla she's become, Godfrey mused.
"You should treat your servants better, madam; they might obey their mistress better in that way," the lord of Ibelin offered. There was a discreet cough from the doorway, and Godfrey turned in his chair to see Yussif, hovering as he usually did when he had something to say that needed to interrupt his lord's conversation. "Yes?" Godfrey asked.
"Sayyid, the water for Sayyida's bath is ready now, if she will come," Yussif offered very courteously and quietly, as if speaking too loudly might offend the lady's ears.
"Where are my manners?" Godfrey said, rising from his chair. "Forgive me, Lady Audemande; I should have let you bathe first before entreating you to conversation. The water for your washing, it seems, is ready."
"Godfrey, I think it entirely impossible for you to be without manners," Aude said staunchly. "The impertinence is mine in drawing you into conversation."
"I shall see you for dinner, then, when it is ready?" Godfrey said, only trying, once more, to be polite.
"Of course, my lord," Audemande said, bowing her head in acquiescence and following the steward out of the room.
A lone breeze blew the smells from the kitchen across the courtyard, tugging Godfrey's attention further and further away from his account books as the afternoon drew on until, stretched to its limit, the Baron bid the tireless numbers cease and went to attend the preparations for dinner.
His houseguest descended on dinner as only women raised in a certain privilege can, in a cloud of silks whose cleanliness after such a ride only God Himself could account for, smelling of rosewater and all the other whims of his servants in the bath-house. Godfrey stood as she entered, leading the Little Dove over to her bolsters and allowing her to sit as the feast was laid before her, not entirely Frankish by design but bearing only cursory resemblance to the spreads of the Sultan in Damascus.
"Why is it whenever I come here," Aude asked, her eyes visually picking through the food, "your cook insists on treating me as though I were the lady of house and in need of impressing?"
"We seldom have ladies here; I suppose my cook is trying to get you to stay so she might be held to a higher standard than the needs of an aging bachelor," Godfrey said blandly. Aude laughed and met his eyes.
"And while we are on the subject, why do you make me laugh so?" she asked, clearly trying to lead him into something.
"I enjoy the sound," Godfrey said simply. Aude smiled as if she knew something he did not and contented herself for the moment filling her plate with dainties. When she had finished she passed the plate to him and begin filling another, this one apparently for herself.
"What shall we talk of, lady?" Godfrey asked, studying the plate in his hands. Rock pigeon, stuffed dates, lentils in savory sauce over rice dyed green with coriander. The best, brightest, and biggest of everything.
"The crops, the fields, your tenants. Everything and nothing at the same time."
"My crops give as little profit in conversation as they do in my purse. There is little here to entertain the young women of Jerusalem and France in Ibelin, lady."
"Ah, but Jerusalem does not have you, Lord Godfrey, and you amuse me. Tell me the life story of the Lord Godfrey of Ibelin, then!"
"It is a rather long tale and uneventful in the telling," Godfrey said, picking at the pigeon-meat in front of him and nibbling at a morsel of the bird.
"It is not the importance of the secret that entrances but rather the idea of a secret itself," Aude said mysteriously. "No man comes to Jerusalem without a story. Mine you've heard many times…and yet I have never heard yours. Come, there is something to every man's life worth telling."
"Very well, then. Where do I begin?"
"With your birth! It is a simple enough place to begin," Aude said, sitting back in her bolsters and taking a dainty bite from one of her dates.
"I was born…"
"No, not like that! Begin with your mother. It's a convention a man always forgets and a woman never does," Aude declared staunchly. "What was the woman who bore and reared Godfrey like?"
Godfrey squinted, as if trying to see an exceptionally small picture on the wall of his chamber, dimly peering back into his memories. His mother…
"Her name was Rohais, the daughter of Blanche and Thierry. She married my father, Barisan, a signeur to the house of the Counts of Chartres, when she was very young. I was her second son."
"A second son! That must have made your father very proud."
"If he was, I never knew about it," Godfrey mused. "I was a baby born in spring, when the flowers were beginning to bloom again…
"A son! A son for Sir Barisan!" The midwife's excited cry seemed tawdry echoing in the big house, fit for bakers or blacksmiths who needed someone on whom to bestow their trade. And her voice was hurting Rohais' ears, now that the lady thought about it. One of her serving-women closed the door and dimmed the sound somewhat, and the Lady looked up from the face of her son at her husband.
"Well, my lord, are you pleased with me?"
Barisan nodded. "Another son is always welcome. The child shall be baptized tomorrow; I shall see the priest about it."
"What shall he be baptized as?"
A pause. "Godfrey," Sir Barisan decided. "Godfrey was the old count's friend and commander in the Levant. We shall ask Count Thibault to be Godfather to the boy, which he will accept, I think, and…one of his wife's ladies to be godmother. You can see to that sort of thing, can't you?
"I can, my lord," His wife assured him.
"Good." He kissed his wife on the forehead and gently patted the newly born Godfrey on the head. Patriarchal duties discharged, Barisan turned on his heel and left rather quickly, as if the whole scene had bored him.
"Do you hear all of that, little one? The count to be your godfather. You should be honored; he is a great man. As your father is, and as you shall be one day, my little one. Did you recognize him there, your father?" Rohais asked, peering into her child's pinched, slowly unreddening face. "You should have, you probably met him a few times while you were still inside," she commented with a little frown.
"Godfrey…that's a big name for such a little boy. Do you think you will be like Godfrey of Boullion, after whom we have named you, little one? Shall you go to Jerusalem and fight for our lord and savior? You would make your mother very proud with that."
The baby yawned, mashing his little lips together and letting forth a cry, hungry or tired of his mother's voice or a dozen other things that mothers have to learn by instinct before the child's use of words gets in the way of their true intents. The screaming summoned the wet nurse, who took little Godfrey expertly from the lady's arms and nestled the infant against one large and prominent breast, holding the child's head still while he felt for breakfast. Rohais watched her son nurse, her own breasts aching at the thought. But her mind was not on her child – it was far away, remembering the birth of her first son, her Stephen. How happy Barisan had been, how excited that he had a wife who could conceive and bear a son, a first-born and a son! He had cried it from the rooftops, brought her gems and a new dress in celebration. He had even named the boy after his liege lord's father, Stephen of Blois. How sedate this all had seemed. Another son. Oh well.
But what father wouldn't be a little anxious with a second son? Two boys to inherit, two boys to marry off or get rid of in some way. If one died, so much the better, but Stephen, almost a year old now, was a strong boy, and would not die, Rohais thought. And in a few days, Barisan would be back in her bed, and she would probably be with child again.
The lord loves to take his marriage rights but hates the duties of fatherhood that follow them, the lady thought to herself. If Stephen is his child then you, Little Godfrey, you will be mine.
"There, mistress, he'll sleep softly now," the nurse said, handing the child back to the lady. Eyes closed, little Godfrey's hands were balled up into fists, drawing himself together so he might sleep.
"Will you sleep, Godfrey? Will you let your mother sing you to sleep?" Rohais asked softly, rocking her son back and forth in her arms.
"At the clear fountain,
While I was strolling by,
I found the water so nice
That I went in to bathe.
So long I've been loving you,
I will never forget you."
"Il y a longtemps que je t'aime
Jamais je ne t'oublierai," Godfrey tried to sing, his voice sounding flat and lifeless compared with the voice of his mother in his memory. The stars had risen, and around them on the terrace the night air was getting colder, the land of Ibelin washed in a gray-blue kind of light.
"A beautiful song," Aude said, smiling sleepily and then yawning in spite of herself, hastily covering up her mouth with her hand.
"Forgive me the lateness of the hour, lady, I lost the time," Godfrey apologized. "I should let you sleep. You have had quite a day."
"Quite a day, yes, but never so long I would wish a story like that unheard," Aude said, rising from her seat and stretching a little. "And tomorrow, my lord, you will continue it."
Godfrey smiled bemusedly at the young woman. " And what shall I tell you about tomorrow, Lady Aude?"
"The next woman who made you sing that song," the lady poet called over her shoulder, shuffling off into the twilit corridor after the house-servant.
Whatever can she mean by that? Godfrey wondered as he gathered himself up from the terrace and made his own way inside, softly humming the lullaby to himself. He drifted off to sleep quicker than he had for quite some time, the soft French echoing in his dreams as if he were just a child again.