Song of a Peacebringer, Chapter 21 – O God, You Have Abandoned Us
You might need some tissues for this chapter. Just saying.
The dawn was well beyond breaking when Aude ran back to Baldwin's rooms, hair flying in all directions, dress wrinkled and spotted with ink. Sybilla was just emerging, closing the door behind her. Her eyes were red, and she didn't look as though she'd slept at all.
"Baldwin, is he well? May I see him now?" Aude asked anxiously, holding Montgisard to her chest. "Or is he sleeping? Shall I come back later?"
Sybilla looked at her, her mouth a tight line, trying not frown. She took a deep breath.
"Aude, Baldwin is dead."
Aude's heart dropped like a stone, and the poet stood looking at her princess, silent. Time seemed to stand still, the sands of the hourglass suspended for incalculable moments. Her papers fluttered to the floor, and then she, too, dropped to her knees, wailing, drawing her hand to her mouth as if she might stop the sobs from escaping. "But I just…it was only hours ago that I…"
"Now, Aude, please, don't…" Sybilla began, her own hand over her face, the tears coming back to her as well.
"I didn't get to read him the poem," Aude cried, ignoring her mistress. "I've finished it and now he'll never read it! He'll never know!"
Sybilla looked at her friend and then, without warning, she began crying too. "I'm sorry, Aude," she began, but found she had no more words to say. They sat there in front of Baldwin's chambers and wept a good long while until they found they had no more tears left, and could weep no more.
"May I go…" Aude gestured weakly to the door, getting to her feet and steadying herself against a table, her knees still weak.
"No, Aude," Sybilla said strongly. "Remember him as he was…as you imagined him to be. That was how he would have liked you to remember him. The way he will be remembered in your poem"
Aude nodded, and, taking the papers from the servant who had gathered them up, hobbled back up to her study. She found the box where she had kept Gregory's letters, and, opening the box, threw them to the floor. Reverently she placed the manuscript of Montgisard inside, and closed it, locking the little chest hard. Satisfied, she closed the door to her study, tucking the key to the box inside her dress.
Then she went back to her rooms to change into something black.
For the next several months a great pall hung over the city as the people mourned Baldwin, and then celebrated the coronation of Sybilla's little Baldwin as King of Jerusalem, and then mourned again at the loss of the little boy. Sybilla was crowned Queen, and Guy her King Consort, and the city celebrated with a sort of muted, half-filled joy. Aude wrote nothing, not able to bring a pen to paper without thinking that she had not written fast enough to share her beloved poem with Baldwin.
Men came and went, first Reynald of Chatillon with a company of knights, and then an emissary from Saladin, demanding the return of his sister's mutilated corpse and the heads of the men responsible. The emissary went back to Saladin without his own head, and Tiberias complained privately to Aude that he hoped Reynald would go the same way soon.
Then Guy rode out with Reynald, into the desert to an undefensible wasteland called Hattin, where it was said afterwards that the army, without water and without that other precious commodity, hope, had been massacred. Balian and Tiberias went out to inspect the damage, coming back with the news that neither the King's body nor his weapons were on the field, and he had certainly been taken captive, the True Cross had been stripped of its gold and its reliquaries and was now merely a meaningless wooden wreck on the battlefield, and that Raynald of Chatillon was dead, his head presiding over the carnage on a pike. Most men called it bloody and excessive. Aude merely called it fair.
"I'm leaving Jerusalem," Aude announced to Sybilla. The palace was quiet now, with no knights to fill it."There's nothing here for me anymore. My friends- Baldwin, Brother John, William, Godfrey– all dead. Tiberias has offered to take Gregory and me to his estate in Tripoli, and from thence Gregory will go home, through Byzantium. There's no room in Jerusalem for poets anymore," Aude said softly to Sybilla. "Or sanity, as Tiberias says."
"I wish you luck there," Sybilla said. "I, too, am thinking about leaving."
"And the graves of your brother, your son? And your living children? What becomes of them?"
"They are daughters, Aude. Playing pieces on a grand board for their father to move where he wishes. As he would move me, if he could. Let him have them, if he wants them so. He never loved them much."
"My father tried to make me play chess once. He failed," Aude recalled with a chuckle. "I do not have the head for games of strategy. But I do not forget what he said about the board. He said that the queen was the most powerful piece in the game, because she could move anywhere, or kill anyone, but also that if the King were to lose the queen, it was the most grievous blow a player could be dealt."
"Guy is not a king, Audemande. You know that. I say let him suffer him suffer the loss," Sybilla said flatly. Aude smiled thinly.
"Then I go," she said simply. She had nearly crossed the entire room before Sybilla spoke again.
"Aude, have you no song to sing me before you leave? No last story to tell me or wisdom to give? Five years I've known you, and been your friend. Shall we now depart in silence?" Sybilla asked, her voice now very much afraid.
Aude turned back and smiled sadly to her friend, thinking.
"O God, You have rejected us, You have broken us;
You have been angry; restore us.
You have made the land quake, You have split it open;
Heal its breaches, for it totters.
You have made Your people experience hardship;
You have given us bitter wine to drink that makes us stagger.
You have given a banner to those who fear You,
That it may be displayed because of the truth.
That Your beloved may be delivered,
Save with Your right hand, and answer us!
God has spoken in His holiness:
"I will exult, I will portion out Shechem and measure out the valley of Succoth.
Gilead is Mine, and Manasseh is Mine;
Ephraim also is the helmet of My head;
Judah is My scepter.
Moab is My washbowl;
Over Edom I shall throw My sandal;
Shout loud, O Philistia, because of Me!"
Who will bring me into the besieged city?
Who will lead me to Edom?
Have not You Yourself, O God, rejected us?
And will You not go forth with our armies, O God?
O give us help against the adversary,
For deliverance by man is in vain.
Through God we shall do valiantly,
And it is He who will tread down our adversaries." Aude finished her quote and looked at her friend. "Farewell, Sybilla. Peace be with you."
The Queen of Jerusalem looked broken, a relic of the former self. "And also with you," she said with a faint smile, leaving Aude to depart alone.
It doesn't really help this chapter that I'm nearing the end of the 'completed manuscript' chunk of my drafts and moving into the 'really needs to be finished' portion of the copy. Plus this is the depressing part. I apologize for that.
Several of you, dear readers, as well as myself, appear to be entertaining the idea that our good general Nasir might end up being Aude's love interest. While this is definitely not what I have written so far, I'm wondering now if that might be a better way to go. What do all of you think?
OH! One more item of business – the family trees I promised you last week have gone through my scanner twice now, with no improvements on the image quality. Mea Culpa, again.
Go to h-t-t-p:// picasa dot com slash mercurygray/FamilyTreesOftLooseTheirLeaves?feat=directlink and hopefully that will work.