Confession
Godfrey of Ibelin hated hospitals. The smell, the flies, the sounds of pained and dying human creatures. Hospitals meant that you had not died on the battlefield, that God was slowly trying to finish you off from plague or bad humours. Hospitallers Godfrey could accommodate and appreciate, goodly men that they were, but the Hospital in itself...sweet Jesu, was ever such a punishment meant for men? It was Purgatory on earth, a hellish sort of waiting.
The Baron of Ibelin would have given his horses, his house, his few acres and all that he possessed, to leave the Hospital by his own accord and continue onward towards home. Whether to die at sea or in his own house he cared not, so long as it was not here, now, in this dismal place. He needed something to distract his mind. Home. He would think of home. Not France and that dirty, dark castle he had just left -- that had not been home for many, many years. In fact, he mused, it had never really been home at all.
A wind brought in the smell of the sea, drowning out for a moment the stench of the sickroom surrounding him. Godfrey breathed as deeply as his injured side would let him, letting the salt air and its particular smell fill his nostrils. Far across the sea was Ibelin, and his house there, his servants and retainers, his crops, where the air smelled of dust and dry air. It was late afternoon -- the men were still in the fields, he would have just have finished the midday meal, and he would be sitting on his veranda, surveying the fields below until he decided to take a horse and go out himself to inspect the work. A servant would bring a drink -- cooling, to counteract the afternoon heat. He was not so rich that he could afford ice from the high mountains, as they could in the city, but the cistern in his house was deep enough for cool water, at least.
There would be children's laughter outside in the courtyard, and below the veranda, probably playing some game. Knights and Kings, perhaps. Godfrey smiled a little at the thought, watching his own, adult son traverse the courtyard below with his sergeant at arms, probably going into the city on some errand. He might have liked to see his son grow up. Would I have been a good father? Godfrey wondered. I have not served him well in that regard thus far.
Let me imagine my children, Godfrey thought, some...two or three. Playing down in the courtyard with the servant children, the Kings for the game. Little smiles, high laughter. But I would need a wife, too, for this little charade. Godfrey's mind wandered amid the women of Jerusalem, desert roses in Frankish gardens. He had considered marriage briefly, when he first arrived, a young Frenchman with a Northern accent and no lands, no title, and no especial allegiance. Baldwin the Third had been king then, his brother Almaric still a teenager. Women had a different cut then, different dress and mannerisms. Eleanor in far-away France had changed those. He had committed his fair share of indiscretions with the minor ladies, but he had never really been in love, not enough to offer marriage. And he had never had enough to offer a bride's father, either. Almaric, when he became king, never really cared much for Godfrey, but he allowed him to guard his son, Baldwin, and it was the young Baldwin who cared for the Baron of Ibelin, as though Godfrey had been his own father. The young king had proposed several matches for Godfrey when he was young and childish enough to think about such things, but Godfrey had never considered such things seriously. The women of the court certainly did not, either. He might have been a loyal knight, but they were raised to think about prestige and wealth above such things as loyalty and honor.
Godfrey returned to his daydream, putting a faceless woman in where his wife should have been, walking into the courtyard to collect their children -- for lessons or some such nonsense. She turned, and Godfrey saw that he had unconsciously given her a face -- the face of Audemande of Vinceaux, Baldwin's Court Poet. Now there was a woman who loved me, even though she was too young to know what it was she did, Godfrey remembered with a smile, closing his eyes. She was not of Jerusalem by birth, but came from France when she was a little young thing, too frightened to remember her name on occasion. The city overwhelmed her, until the Princess Sybilla took her under her wing. She did not care for power -- she had not been raised that way. She cared for love, and she idolized me, Godfrey recalled. If I was younger, I might have taken her for a wife. But she was too young, too sweet.
And sweet Jesu, she was tempting sometimes because of it. When is it difficult to love something so young and fresh? She didn't know her own charm, preferring the dust of the scholar and the gown of the cleric and the justice instead of the stains of the battlefield and the surcoat of a knight. She did not care for girlish, childish things like other women did, except for her romances, and that seemed to put her out of reach to the common man -- the Little Dove, flying above the world observing it instead of down among the people she wrote of. She allowed only a few men into her sphere -- Tiberias, who loved her like his own daughter, Baldwin, a gentle second master to his sister's first, William of Tyre, her teacher and guide, and himself. What role did he play?
I was her model, her perfect knight. She was more childish than I supposed, when she made me into that likeness, Godfrey remembered.
And he had chided her for it, often. She had paid him no mind, though, and smiled her way around his objections. Oh, yes, they had played that argument out many times when he was in the city, sitting in Baldwin's garden in the Citadel of David after the evening meal.
"Audemande, I am not this perfect knight you make me out to be in your poetry – this Godfrey and Helaine nonsense, it's completely untrue. I don't know where you get it from."
She had laughed, looking at her manuscript pages and then back at him, her eyes bright. "What is not true about it, Baron? That you are not a knight? I am certain sure you are one of those," she joked, teasing him. She was old enough in those days to know a woman's wiles, even if she refrained from using them overmuch.
"True enough, but I am not your perfect knight," Godfrey remembered stressing.
"Do you not serve your king, and attend mass, and say your prayers?" she had asked.
"Yes, but--" Godfrey began testily. She had silenced him with a single poised finger, going on.
"And do you not treat ladies with respect, and do them courtesy when you are here in the city?"
"Not so much as you suppose," he had amended gruffly.
"Oh, come, Baron, it is not that you do not love women. I have been to Ibelin. Your serving girls are very pretty little things indeed," she hinted. Godfrey sat back in his chair, bemused and a little scandalized. Sybilla was beginning to become a bad influence on Aude, if she could be so bold in her assessments of him.
"In France you could be beaten for saying such things," Godfrey reminded her.
"We are not in France, my lord," she said pertly. "I may say what I please."
Godfrey studied her face, framed by the airy veil that covered her dark hair, and the silver fillet and collar that held it in place, jingling a little when she laughed or moved her head. Her gaze was different now than he had noticed before – it was a look he was familiar with, but not from her. That look in her eyes was desire. Not lust, perhaps, but a wish for his attention and…affection? "Audemande, do you love me?" he asked suddenly. Her look changed almost immediately, desire quickly trading places with surprise.
She recovered herself quickly before she replied. "Would you reprimand such a thing, my lord?" she asked, testing him.
So he had read her rightly. "Bestow your affection elsewhere, Little Dove. You're too young for me, and too innocent. I have done deeds your ears should never hear," Godfrey said.
"Baldwin wishes I would marry. He would forgive your sins," Aude offered.
Godfrey allowed himself a chuckle. "They are not Baldwin's to forgive, Little Dove, nor yours."
The Court Poet considered this, choosing her words wisely. "William explained to me yesterday why God wished we should go to confession," Aude said softly. "He said that Jesus, in his infinite wisdom and knowing full well that we would sin, gave us confession so that we would constantly be reminded of his great and constant love for us, and of the joys that await us in heaven. And Jerusalem, they say, is the very center of the world for asking forgiveness. "
"Some sins are unforgiveable."
"I think God should be the judge of that," Aude said simply.
Godfrey laughed. " You are too fair and just by half. Qualities wasted in a woman, to be sure. You would have made a wonderous good Marshall."
"But then Tiberias would have to seek employment elsewhere, and you would be freindless, my lord," Aude said with an endearing smile. Sweet child. But she did not stir from her chair – the interview, it seemed, was not over.
"Do you wish to hear my confession, then, Audemande?" Godfrey asked, his voice sounding more tired than he felt.
" I cannot claim to speak for God, though, in the matter of your forgiveness. But speaking of a thing lessens its load, I find, and I know you are a man of many burdens."
The Baron laughed. "Again so helpful, and generous! If I had sons, Aude, I'd wish that they found wives like you."
"You yet need a wife yourself," Aude reminded. "You are not so old that your age may serve as your excuse."
Godfrey rolled his eyes in exasperation. "God in Heaven, Audemande, what is it you see in me that you adore? I am not your perfect knight. I do not rescue damsels in distress or fight for the Holy Cross. I am a murderer, a killer of men and a taker of lives. Nothing more. I fight for...for nothing. And everything."
"Perhaps that is what I love," Aude said measuredly. Godfrey turned, incensed by her perseverance. But her face was so eager, and her smile so genuine that he lowered his hand instead to stroke her cheek, smiling sadly.
"I knew a woman, like you, once, in France. She was sweet, cheeky, skilled at what she set her mind to. And she was another man's wife. But she tempted me, though she did not know it, and I desired her very much. One day, while he was at the fair in the next town, I went to her and...took what I wanted," Godfrey admitted plainly, looking at the stones in the path rather than look at Audemande. In France, he had heard, in Eleanor's court in Aquitaine, it was said that women sat as judges in a Court of Love, convened to mediate in lover's quarrels, a parody of the king's law courts. How strange it was to be judged by a woman in the same way, to admit his crime and stand by for her punishment.
"Is this your confession?" Aude asked levelly. Why does she not judge me? Godfrey wondered to himself – her face was sad, yes, but not angry. Why was she not angry?
"Will you be silent about what you hear?" Godfrey asked grimly.
"I am a woman -- my soul is raised for silence," Audemande admitted.
"So was hers," Godfrey remembered. "She never told her husband. She…she bore a son, the next year. My son. Balian." The name was foreign on his tongue – he'd never uttered it aloud before. There had never been any need to.
"Balian," Aude repeated. "It is a good name."
"It was short for Barisan, my father. She swore never to tell him where he came from. I left for the Holy Land before he was born. That was nearly twenty three years ago," Godfrey calculated.
"And this troubles you?" Aude asked, gently probing at an old wound long neglected. She could see a man's heart before he'd even known it was there to be shown – it was her gift from God, to have sharp eyes into the soul like that. He had nodded, looking away from her, ashamed.
"I have no heirs. When I die, Ibelin will pass back to the crown. I have given the boy nothing…it should be his. He is my son," Godfrey acknowledged heavily.
My son. He had never had a cause to think about Balian before that conversation, and after it, the boy had not left his thoughts. The thought of his heir, his only son, somewhere in France, eking out his living as a peasent, old enough to be some sort of tradesman with a wife and family now, made him restless. He spoke to Brother John Lazarene, to Tiberias, yes, even to Baldwin about it, unsure about what he should do. They all advised the same thing – to seek the boy out. And so he had, traveling across Europe to return to his ancestral home, the castle he had not seen in some twenty eight years. He had found the man Balian, the village blacksmith, mourning the loss of his wife and child. And this was his son.
"Father, what are you thinking about?" Balian asked, rousing the older man from his sleep. He called me father, Godfrey realized with a smile. It was the first time Balian had ever called him thus. "You were smiling in your sleep."
"I was thinking about a woman, in the Holy Land. A friend of the King's. Audemande, the Little Dove. When we return to Jerusalem, you will meet her."
"And what is so special about her, that you dream about her?" Balian asked with the barest mention of a hinting smile.
Godfrey shook hi s head stodgily. "Nothing like that – she's far too young for those kinds of thoughts. She is the King's Court Poet, a most wise and discerning woman. She could read a man's soul," Godfrey remembered bemusedly. His son looked confused, and Godfrey waved it away. "You'll recognize it when you meet her. She has a good heart. I learned much from her."
His son smiled. "What things?" He asked, pulling the stool on which he sat closer. Godfrey smiled at the memory of the young poetess, sharing the fruits of her studies that day or her latest lines. So he told his son everything, about her poetry and her friendship, until the shadows had grown long in the courtyard and the torches were lit in the corridor outside. It cleansed him, to speak thus, to give out all his memories this way. The collected happiness of many warm, past days was enough to keep his thoughts away from the pain in his side until the sun was completely underneath the veil of the horizon. But as the warmth of the accumulated memories faded, Godfrey could feel himself fading, too. His limbs were heavy, and every moment struggling to hold his eyes open was another mountain looming in his path, waiting to be climbed with monumental patience.
The Baron clutched blindly at Brother John's sleeve, knocking the monk's prayerbook from his hands. "It is time," He rasped. "I can hardly see." He'd watched enough men die to know what it looked like, what it felt like. This was Death.
They carried him to the innermost chapel in the Hospital, hung with white gauzy drapes to keep out prying eyes. His breath was failing him now – when Balian came and knelt at his feet it was all he could do to stand under his own power and wheeze through the oath of Knighthood, giving his son a buffet across his cheek with the last of his strength and collapsing onto his seat. So tired…he was so very, very tired. He began leaning forward, his eyes sliding shut.
Come, Godfrey, and dance with me, the Little Dove said somewhere in the depths of his memory. You are not tired yet. Why do you doze off? The party is not yet done. Come back to us.
A pair of girlish hands closed around his shoulders, and Godfrey felt himself fall into someone's arms, looking up to see his son catch him. His son…he held a hand to Balian's face, smiling sadly. He wished he could have spent more time with him. So much to say, and so little time to say it all…
"Defend the king. If the king is no more, protect the people," Godfrey urged. Every breath was becoming more and more difficult, and he fell back against his friend's side.
"It is time, my lord, to confess to Holy God, not your son," Brother John said urgently. "Are you sorry for all your sins?"
His breath was shallow, his pulse weak. Godfrey knew he was dying, but he was beyond concern. He could still feel her hands on his shoulders, growing heavier, more real, with each passing, wasted breath. He had already made his confession. It was what had brought him here. And his duty was already finished.
"For all but one."
I think it might be safe to say that you're in love with one of your characters too much when you start trying to write random one shots with them. But I liked this idea too much to give it up, and so here it is, a Song of a Peacebringer one-shot involving Audemande and Baron Godfrey as her first crush. But I enjoyed writing it, and I hope you enjoyed reading it. Godfrey doesn't get enough fanfic, really.