Mirrum had always supposed war to be a grand, dark, terrifying thing in the Holy Land. Palestine's wars were surely different than the grubby dishonourable burning of thatch and cotte in England, the petty squabbles of quarrelling barons. All war in England could amount to was a sour sort of victory. Charred sticks and lumps of dead flesh were the rewards of victory. That was all.
But here! The Holy Land! Mirrum had seen it in her mind's eye as something great and terrible, The great war with Heaven fought over again, with stern and awe-inspiring leaders on both sides locked in honourable, deadly, dangerous, beautiful conflict...
If Mirrum had cared to examine her impressions of holy war and battle more carefully, she would have found, at its root, an early memory of a wall painting in the small church in the fenlands of the north. It was a million miles away from the heat and dust of Palestine. The artist had been some unknown, the painting crudely done in bright, garish daubs that would be sneered at in the austerity of Jerusalem. But Mirrum had been enchanted by the depiction of Lucifer battling the forces of Heaven. The artist had not sought to make the demons grinning scaly things – this was still a bitter fray between creatures of heaven, angel against angel, and what had terrified Mirrum was the fact that their faces were all the same. The pitiless beauty of the archangels had been not so very different from the proud defiance of the Lord of Flies.
But where in Palestine was the grace of battle? The carefully depicted subtlety of struggle? It was nothing but a little tumble of dust on a deserted plain – a wide circle of kicked-up earth closing in on a desperate little tumbling patch of other dust.
Mirrum thought, with bitter cynicism which would not have been unworthy of Tiberias himself, of herself on the road to Jerusalem. Even the dust must have known Christ...
And all men could think of doing was die in it, like ants. And the only likeness there was to the tumble of dust was that from this distance, at this height, you could see no difference between Saracen and Frank as they fought and bled into fly-blown, stinking sand...
The ring of what might, perhaps, be the Saracen force closed into a glittering circle in the sunlight.
'Hah! Told you so!' Reynaud de Chatillon surged greedily forward, still clutching a wine cup in one hand. A dribble of red wine spilt upon the stone parapet as he leaned forward. 'Little fool, eh! To die outnumbered, for nothing!'
Sybilla turned her head slightly. 'Nothing?' Her eyes seemed to be horribly fixed on the spilt wine; it was so very deep a red. Mirrum could almost follow her train of thought as Sybilla looked up, stricken, at the tussle upon the plain of Kerak, and clasped a hand over her mouth to suppress the low wail that threatened to rise there.
'Nothing?'
There was some, little, feeble activity below. Mirrum could not tear her eyes away. It looked like little more than the tussle of little boys in the dust from here – there was no beautiful moment captured mid-battle by an artist who had never seen war. There were crushed things lying like twitching insects, the ringing scream of a dying horse –
Something reached out and slapped her face. The sudden impact barely hurt, but the shock of it broke the sickening spell of the moment.
'Don't look, Mirrum –' Sybilla's face was set hard as steel.
'But-'
'You want to watch men die?' Sybilla had drawn blood to her underlip from biting it so hard. 'We are all going to die, but...there are men drawn down into Death as we look on. To watch that is...cruel.' Sybilla bent her head. 'In paradisum deducant te Angeli:in tuo adventu suscipiant te Martyres,et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem...' Sybilla had suddenly begun to murmur a snatch of the Requiem under her breath, her hands twitching as though she told an invisible rosary.
Mirrum's insides went cold. On Sybilla's lips that part of the Requiem Mass had a more desperate meaning. She wasn't praying for Lord Balian's reception into heaven. She was desperately pleading with her Maker for the Baron's life, for a return to the earthly city of Jerusalem rather than the holy city of Heaven. It was an imperious commanding of God to intercede now, with some miraculous intervention, some –
'Sweet Jesu!'
Mirrum blinked water from her overstrained eyes and tried to focus – not on the ominously quietened melee on the plain, but on the wavering horizon between sky and sand, the heat-mist forming a shimmering barrier to sight. Yet something had...shone – almost as Mirrum had thought of miracles...
Angels, Mirrum thought dizzily, angels – and I had stopped believing in Jerusalem as a sacred city here on Earth. And after all it proves me wrong...
'God heard you, my lady!' Mirrum, in her excitement suddenly turned shrill with shocked disbelief. 'It is the holy army of Saint George come to intercede in the battle-'
Sybilla stopped, sharply. 'What?'
'Look on the horizon, lady! Something shines, the banner of Heaven –'
Reynaud de Chatillon (although he snorted at the rising note of jubilation in the serving maid's voice) also took a furtive look at the horizon. 'Saint George!' he snorted, after a few moments glaring at the view. 'Hah! You've a diseased view of heaven – t'is naught but the leper –'
Fortunately the Lord de Chatillon hastily recollected present company. It was as well he did; Sybilla had turned, white-lipped and staring, to look at him with stony eyes. But she turned her eyes to the shimmering line of silver forming on the horizon with a look of wavering hope.
'My brother,' she said simply. And that was all – no praise, no censure. 'That perhaps is as well – see the colours there? You overlook Salahuddin, little ghost.'
Salahuddin's banners were a stark contrast to the strange glitter on the horizon. In place of that the great lords of Egypt and Syria bore hot red and deep green standards looped with the graceful swirls of inscrutable Arabic script. When you looked at the two greater parts of the war host...
Mirrum could again see the war against Heaven. Each beautiful in their own way, and who was to say which had the better ground?
The thought of watching those ponderous, clumsy things called armies, made up of so many thousands upon thousands of single men...
'Will they fight?' Mirrum said queasily.
'Fight?' Sybilla looked surreptitiously over her head for Reynaud de Chatillon – but he had retreated within his garish silk pavilion to pour himself more wine. He paid them no attention. 'Not if there can be reason first, I hope. Salahuddin is a wise man – and he has dealt generously with my brother... before...' Sybilla's voice was doubtful.
Mirrum peered at the war host. A single, minute speck of white had trotted out from the serried ranks as the soldiers slowly drew to a halt.
Sybilla's hands gripped the stone parapet with a convulsive, involuntary gesture, before turning her head away.
'That is he,' she said abruptly. 'And there, look to the right – Salahuddin. He sits his horse well, don't you think? A noble adversary and a worthy opponent... you do not look at Lord Salahuddin, Mirrum. He is there –'
'I see him.' Mirrum said absently, staring earnestly at the plain below. 'It is just... I have never seen a king before, my lady.'
Sybilla twitched a trailing corner of her headdress. 'I have seen many in my family.' She said quietly. 'They are men like any other. Does Tiberias... talk of my brother to you?'
Mirrum turned her pale face slightly, tilting it so a cloud of frowsy pale hair fell forward over her brow. 'Seldom...'
'Ah!' A breathy sigh from Sybilla.
Mirrum said nothing, but now she looked with renewed interest - a slight, fluttering turn of interest, for it had come upon her that this was the Physician's lord and master that rode free from his retinue across the plain – that she saw two kings, almost the same size as Prince Perseus' toy soldiers, and they gazed calmly at each other as though across a chequered board of flat patterned kingdoms...
'Yes,' Sybilla said, as if in answer to her unvoiced question. 'It is something to look upon a parley like that, isn't it? You may tell your grandchildren of it.'
She could see more clearly now, for all her watering eyes. The figure of the King of Jerusalem looked slighter than she had imagined. Kings, whether whole or blighted, existed in Mirrum's fancy as powerfully built and broad-shouldered, men in the last prime fire of life. Older. Wiser. Stronger. It was foolish now – after all Sybilla was a winter older than her brother, wasn't she? You could see something of the slenderness of youth in the dim blue-clad figure's carriage. Yet... there was none of the energy of youth. There was a strained weariness to the King in the saddle; a lethargy kept tightly reined back. He kept struggling to hold up his head with sharp gestures as though he could scarcely move but for effort of will...
Mirrum was disappointed that she could not see his face. From this distance there would have been little enough to see, but the sun's reflection in what seemed to be... a casque? It obscured her view. She would have liked to see if there were still any resemblance to Sybilla...
Mirrum scarcely had time to take in Salahuddin, a wary, powerful man who was every inch the king of imagination. But whatever exchange had occurred between kings, it must have been brief. In a moment all was busy activity – the pale figure spurred suddenly into a canter, the dark splash of colour that was the Lord Salahuddin bursting into a backward gallop that let the great millipede war host away from Kerak...
A small botch of white and blue detached itself from the body of the war host and rode resignedly after their liege lord.
'Tiberias.' Sybilla said mechanically. 'Doubtless my husband; it would not be well for him to be far from my brother. I expected him to come, even if he rides in the company of servants and common apothecaries –'
The word jolted Mirrum – not into words but into a single, stricken look.
Sybilla still looked outward. 'Perhaps the Lord of Ibelin still lives...'
'Will the ... the physicians be with the war host?'
'Almost certainly. This will have taxed him beyond his – Why, Mirrum! What foolishness do you think you –'
'I must go down!'
'There is no need! Mirrum –'
But Mirrum had sprung, without knowing quite what she did, from Sybilla's outstretched hand, fleeing madly towards the stairs. Reynaud had unaccountably sidled away from the parapet, his boisterous exclamations wheezing into nothings. The only thing he seemed quite sure of now was his name. Mirrum could him as she ran, below her on the stairs.
'I am Reynaud de Chatillon!'
Oh Physician, Mirrum thought desperately. Why did you come? I have gone mad, I think...But she didn't stop running. He might have succumbed in the desert – heat exhaustion killed more men than battles before the fighting ground was even gained. He might have been injured – although there had been no fighting, but Mirrum's brain took on fever pitch. Why must only Sybilla be allowed to care for what she loved? Why could she not see him? If only to know he saw her, and she saw him – perhaps to see him!
'I am Reynaud de Chatillon!'
Alas, Mirrum's breath betrayed her before she could gain the second staircase. She had to clasp at a narrow window-ledge, gasping for breath as the pain in her sides eased and the blood pounding in her ears began to slow. She could not even see the courtyard below properly, to see if she could spy him out – it was a mere crazy whirl of colour...
'Mirrum!'
And Sybilla had caught up with her. She could hear her calling as she descended the stairs, her skirts rustling a little way above her. 'Mirrum! Wait! Not yet! Not now!'
'I –' Mirrum made a foolish effort to stagger on to the next set of steps before Sybilla's hand bit down on her arm, making her prisoner.
'Listen to me, you little fool,' Sybilla said with soft vehemence. 'You may think me a love-sick cuckolder of husbands, but even I can see the folly in this. Wait! Reynaud de Chatillon goes out thereto fawn – he has nearly caused war! My brother will not be merciful to such a...worm. Your timing could not be more ill-chosen! Wait! And give me the view of the window, too,' Sybilla added plaintively, thawing a little.
'But he might be –'
'You forget,' Sybilla said from the window, which she had somehow taken up by gently elbowing Mirrum out of the way. 'I am like you. Only the man I care for has been in the thick of the fighting, before the war-host came and with nothing more than his duty to aid him. He could very well be dead, or wounded unto death. Does your attachment stand up to such scrutiny?'
Mirrum held a grudging silence.
'I thought so. Hmm...We should, perhaps, go down.' There was a note of satisfaction in Sybilla's voice. 'But slowly. Reynaud will reap his tares in good time. My brother has always loathed him. '
In many ways what passed when they reached the courtyard was little short of a waking dream for Mirrum. It had a nightmarish, surreal quality to it – the ranks of soldiers lined up in sheepish, hushed silence, lines of white-robed attendants and...
Mirrum, although hotly aware of their own prominence in the crowd, could not resist standing on tiptoe to get a better look at the discreet apothecary's assistants lining the walls. There were four of them, almost alike – grave, with lowered eyes. Mirrum couldn't tell if any one of them looked her way or not...
Prominent in the crowd – almost at the King's side, was Lord Tiberias. But this was not the moment to look to him for acknowledgement. Mirrum felt pained merely looking at him. She knew Tiberias cared much for his king, but the Lord of Tripoli looked like a man who has walked over the Megiddo Plains of Hell barefoot, and from the involuntary way he would start forward, he had spent the day in nearly as much agony as his liege lord.
Guy de Lusignan, to nearly everyone's surprise, was also standing smartly at the King's side, with the air of an uneasy schoolboy expecting a whipping, but not daring to appear slack or slow of wit. He scarcely looked pleased to see his wife present – the moment, after all, was one of humiliation - but then Sybilla's gaze swept clean through him as though he were empty air. Deliberately seeing nothing at all.
It was odd to reflect later that the little things in the greater drama playing out before them all caught her eyes first before she looked at the King.
But the deceiving shine of sunlight on the battlefield had not been from a helmet casque. It was not possible to see if he resembled Sybilla at all – save perhaps in height. Close to he was perhaps half a head taller than Tiberias. There was still present, even in his cloaked form, the faintly angular lines of youth.
Mirrum hadn't quite known what to expect. She did not know the sickness, after all – she still entertained a half-hearted belief in a flaxen-haired Fisher King, young and beautiful.
The face before her was beautiful. It was the gentle effigy of a Greek god, chiselled into painstaking neutrality, the sharp lines of the metal mask beautifully, perfectly symmetrical. The face of a second Apollo in repose.
Except for the eyes. Had it not been for the eyes within the mask, the moment would not have tasted sour like lead. The air felt thick and sluggish with tension. For the eyes were hard, like pebbles, and rested with absolute disgust upon the grovelling form of the Lord de Chatillon.
The young King might look like an Apollo, but it was an Apollo whose ire was roused into righteous fury. Mirrum kept her eyes lowered, her hands pressed meekly together. She knew nothing of the public humiliation of nobles.
A stinging exchange followed. Reynaud was desperately trying to conciliate with honeyed words, with flattery, making his plump bulk writhe in acute self-abasement in the dirt...
'Lord have mercy!' Almost as one, the crowd winced.
Had it been any other king, the gesture would have been powerful enough; reducing the proudest of his lords to servile vassalage with the old oath of fealty. But in this king it became more than that; it showed Reynaud de Chatillon to the world as a craven coward as he stooped to submission – by not sparing him. By taking a grim delight in the look of horror freezing on the corpulent knight's face as he snatched off a gauntlet, presenting a maimed hand to the world – For Reynaud to make the token gesture of acceptance.
Tiberias shut his eyes. Not against his lord, but against the ripple of horror passing through the crowd like a murmuring sea – and the way that Tiberias could see, if the others could not, that the King rocked slightly on his feet like a tree twisted by the wind.
Reynaud, to give him credit, hesitated only a moment in thinly disguised repulsion before he threw himself cringingly at his overlord ...
There was nothing worse than the noise that followed. It was worse than the blow, that sound – no, not the sound, the slice of air hastily giving way as the riding crop whipped into Reynaud's face. The King had not given ground in his icy silence, but the controlled anger was suddenly loosed into the riding crop as though it were a weapon of vengeance, until Reynaud rolled towards the ground with bloodied cheeks.
The mask, with its quiet, tranquil expression turned slightly – almost in confusion, as though it had thought this far only to wonder what came next. He wandered, almost in a dream, away from the disgraced De Chatillon, took a step towards Tiberias – and then somehow his foot turned beneath him and he stumbled to his knees.
'Guard!' Tiberias had darted forward almost as the King fell, his voice a hoarse cracked scream. He had braced himself, but he struggled to bear a semi-conscious weight alone. 'For Jesu's sake, help him...'
Mirrum would have involuntarily started forwards but for Sybilla's hand on her arm. It held her back, stiff as a jointed doll.
'Madam?'
'No...'
'Shall we go down to the retinue, my lady?' Mirrum prompted, after Sybilla remained unaccountably stiff and silent. Mirrum was still trembling, for the swift violence of the moment had frightened her almost more than the thought of war. But the piteous spectacle before her keenly awoke her pity for Tiberias' master. 'To the King-?'
'No!' Sybilla said in a harsh whisper, recoiling as though from a serpent. 'No, let him alone!'
Mirrum's look of puzzlement turned to aghast dismay. 'But, madam –'
'There are others to help him,' Sybilla said forbiddingly. 'See?' Two shamefaced Templar knights had leapt out of their stunned silence to sheepishly aid the Lord Marshal.
'But madam, the King...'
Surely the Physician would have helped? He would not have hung back. Inwardly Mirrum's insides curdled with disappointment. He was not here. Or else he was not the kindly creature she thought he was.
'You may go and ask the Lord Marshal that the Lady Sybilla requests to know how her brother fares,' Sybilla said, not meeting Mirrum's gaze. 'But I... cannot go down there. I a –am sorry, I...'
She pushed Mirrum gently onwards. 'Go, since you want it so.'
Mirrum walked (unsteadily, now it came to it), down the broad stone path to the courtyard, stones crunching underfoot, and feeling as though she trod on eggshells. This was a frightening world. All was business now; Reynaud de Chatillon gaping and pinioned between two stout men-at-arms, a confusion of horsemen milling about in preparation. The war-host was leaving. The long, painful journey back to Jerusalem must be begun. It buzzed with purpose that was not her place. Perhaps this was what Sybilla meant. But... why did she seem to hate...?
Mirrum darted out of the path of a cantering horse and stood uneasily in the shadow of the keep, a forgotten wraith in faded green and a crumpled red hood whom nobody noticed. There was no place for her here. She was in the way. Perhaps she should simply return to Sybilla and be a waiting lady rather than a nuisance...
'God places us all here, then, pale child?' A voice said, from just behind Mirrum's left shoulder, in the familiar tones of Raymond of Tripoli. 'At this God-forsaken place...'
It was a distant shadow of his playful banter of old; there was a bleak note of desolation in it that it had never possessed before. The old light in Tiberias' quick eye was quite extinguished, dwindled to a dreary vacancy in the heat of mid-day, and he clutched the reins of his horse with a listless air. There was little of the lean, snappingly ferocious man Mirrum remembered from her first encounter. He looked old, crushed. Bitter as gall.
'My lord, you are not well!' Mirrum put out a concerned hand lest Tiberias should take it into his head to fall from his horse in turn. 'You should –'
'I am well, child.' The Lord Marshal shook his grizzled head, and then looked down. He still held the king's fallen glove in one hand. 'What do you do here?'
'Cana.' Mirrum tired to smile. 'With Sybilla.'
'Ay, Cana. As the world crumbles about us.' Tiberias said sourly. '"Cana!" And she sends you here to be trampled underfoot by the war host for...?'
'I am sent to ask how her brother fares, my lord.' Mirrum anxiously fiddled with a loosened thread in her skirt. 'She is much concerned for his welfare...'
Tiberias turned to throw a glance over his shoulder at Sybilla. She still stood rooted to the spot – but her gaze was fastened hungrily on a weary, bloodstained knight still standing with the point of his sword resting in the dust.
'So I see.' He said, sardonically. 'In her fashion. Nay, wait-' For Mirrum had turned ashamedly to wander back to her mistress. 'What do you do here, pale child? You look almost as lost as I...' Tiberias halted. 'Did you seek your Physician?'
'He is not here.' Mirrum said bitterly. 'I am sure of it.'
'And what assures you of that?' Tiberias asked quietly, bending, under pretence of patting his horse's neck, to look at Mirrum's face.
'He did not – I thought he would...'
'Show himself to you?'
'... Aid the King.' Mirrum said resolutely. 'If my – if the Physician were there he would have helped, I know it. He was too kindly... or I thought him so.' She added. 'But he is either absent, or – worse-' she choked on the word. 'A faint-hearted craven who would not help his master. A-and I do not know what to think, or do, and I-'
'You are tired,' Tiberias interjected. 'And Sybilla has deserted you.' His face looked grimly thoughtful – and with no very propitious thoughts. 'Come,' he said abruptly. 'Ride with me.'
'W-what?'
'Ride with me –' The Lord Marshal leant down from the saddle. 'You are not afraid to ride pillion, I hope?'
'I-'
Mirrum had scarcely time to utter acceptance or denial. Tiberias might be a lean man, but he had sinews of steel and he had hauled Mirrum clean from the ground before she knew where she was in an undignified rumple, propping her before him.
'My reputation as a cynical bachelor,' Tiberias said, in a faint growling attempt to make her smile, 'is already in lamentable tatters as it is, thanks to Sybilla's rumours of mistresses, hmm? There.'
He impatiently kicked his horse into a gallop.
'We ride to the front of the line, pale girl.' He said abstractedly. 'I have a favour to ask of you.'
It was a long journey. The war host had threaded some far away along the dusty road to Jerusalem, and the ill condition of the road to Kerak meant the progress was slower than was its wont. Even at full gallop it took Tiberias well nigh an hour to gain the head of the line – a frightening, bouncing journey for Mirrum, perilously perched at the front of the saddle. But Tiberias was an excellent horseman.
On gaining the front of the column, Tiberias stopped . The litter with Tiberias' poor Fisher King lay ahead, painfully making its way forward at walking pace.
'Here. I said I had a favour to ask of you,' Tiberias said quietly, nudging Mirrum out of the saddle. He slid wincingly from it himself, to stagger forward a few paces. 'There. Take that horse.'
'What?!'
It was the King's mount Tiberias was urging her to – a mild-mannered grey with a placid temper who trotted riderless behind, led by a flagging squire. It was as though Tiberias had urged her to... to...
'I can't ride that, lord!' Mirrum hissed.
'Why not?'
'That would be...'
'I say you shall.' Tiberias said firmly. 'Hup-la! Up with you!'
'But I cannot ride...'
'You don't need to. This isn't a mad steed of Sybilla's brood. Now – you. Wait here whilst I...'
Tiberias swung himself back into the saddle to murmur, urgently, into the words of the chief litter-bearer, and then in a murmur to his liege.
'Here, majesty.' Tiberias said softly – but with grim face. 'I give you your chance for grace.'
No answer.
'Majesty! If you do not undeceive her, I must.' Tiberias said ruthlessly. 'And God forgive me, but I shall think less of the greatest king I have ever served if he dies with a lie on his lips. Give confession. That is all. Confession.'
Mirrum heard nothing of this. She was confused by the utterly incomprehensible turn of the Lord Marshal's mood; and far more alarmed by the great blasphemy of riding a king's horse than she had been at the unreal prospect of war. But she saw Tiberias sharply turn away his head and wheel back to her.
'My favour,' he said severely, as though forbidding protest. 'The King is restless, and in some pain. Ride by his side. That is all I ask. A little company may do some good; more...congenial company than my own.' Tiberias stared straight ahead, his eyes bright. Over-bright, perhaps?
'I am no physician, lord –' Mirrum began in a frightened whisper.
'Ride. Comfort him. For – if not for my sake, then for... Christ's.' Tiberias said abruptly. 'A little compassion is all I ask of you, and if you can – forgiveness.'
'Forgiveness?' Mirrum asked in puzzlement, but Tiberias had let out a hoarse cry to urge his horse back to the tail of the column. The last she saw of him was a spray of stinging dust before her eyes.
And there Mirrum was, swaying slowly to the rhythm of her horse's footbeats and gazing with some trepidation on a king.
