Hi, so here is another chapter. This chapter is entirely in Gisella's perspective and was very moving to write. This story has an intense TRIGGER WARNINGS for the topics of rape, violence and war and due to the way I have written it, it had to be one chapter just for Gisella.
The intention of this chapter is to show the Third Crusade through the eyes of the common people in Antioch, Acre and Jerusalem. War is terrible and many horrors occur on both sides, this is in no way making excuses for anything that happened on the Third Crusade weather under King Richard or Saladin, this is just one girl's story as her world crumbles down around her and how she survives.
The character of Az-Zahir Ghazi is a real historical person. He is the third of Saladin's sons and was an active participant in the Third Crusade. He did eventually marry and die some time in the 1200s. Gisella of course is fictional.
The comment about King Richard potentially having an affair with King Philip of France is a disputed fact amongst history but I have included it in here as a rumour that was spread around to discourage loyalty against him. But again I must warn you there is no historical evidence of this.
Assassin's around this time period were also common.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine just the character of Gisella.
Please Read and Review.
Anything in Italics is the past. Normal writing the present.
TRIGGER WARNINGS.
Internal Displacements
Chapter 7-Gisella's Story
Gisella tells the story of how the Woman in Red was born. Part one of a three part mini arc and told in Gisella' s point of view. Some significant changes from the previous chapter summary. Some historical inaccuracy and some outdated language. Trigger Warnings for mention of sexual assault and rape.
A child in the Holy Lands does not grow up fearing death. They grow up to see it as a friend, to see it as the next part of an adventure. And of course to be closer to Allah their God, Praise Be His Name.
Death is a constant companion these days. They have made many advancements in language, in music and medicine, in culture. They manage to co-exist peacefully together. Of course they are issues cultivated amongst each other but they are sorted by the rule of law and common justice. Things are managed peacefully and corruption is stamped out. They are for the most part a peaceful nation, content on keeping their land and their homes and their children.
And then the English arrive.
Heretics is the word that they are called and one day a King who does not speak the language of his peoples and is rumoured to be one who lies with another man (whispered only in the gutters but whispered nonetheless) arrives and with him come his murderous soldiers who take and take and take and think nothing of the damage that they are creating.
They are soldiers hot for blood and desiring war. They know nothing of gentleness and peace—indeed it has been stamped out of these bloodthirsty Englishmen. For those who stay a nightmare begins.
And then they go, for a time and then come back. Either way it makes no difference. For the ones who survive the nightmare does not end.
Indeed for those lucky unfortunate ones, the nightmare is just beginning.
She wakes with a start. Most mornings go like this when she is fortunate enough to sleep. She used to love sleeping, the warmth of a bed and the pleasure of silk sheets and even now she fantasises about sleep. She dreams of putting her head down on the pillow and sleeping until she never has to wake up. She wishes to Allah—Praise Be His Name—that she could nothing but sleep every night.
But when it is time to go to bed (or whatever she has that constitutes a bed) she wishes herself awake.
In this mad desire to sleep, Gisella simply forgets that dreams exist.
Her home has gone and the light and the gold and the rippling of the water on the roof has gone and all that is left is dank and dark mud, rock and caves. And green. Fuck me there is green. So much of it. It sticks to her boots and drags her down and she's sure that it clashes horribly with her outfit.
Not that she can change it. She's cultivated this reputation for a reasons she's damn well going to keep it.
She stares into the fire for most of the early morning. Her breakfast is bread, her lunch and dinner whatever she can get and though she longs for flavour she makes herself eat it. It does not matter how much of this flavourless mush she makes herself eat. She has had worse and besides, Gisella dines on a breakfast, lunch and dinner of revenge.
It is that desire that sees her here and when she stares into the fire she relives it all again.
She does not think she will ever stop.
She does not want to.
To give up this feeling of all encompassing hatred…she thinks that she might die without it. For without this desire for vengeance, for blood then who is she?
She knows who she is, a scared little girl desperately hoping to be a woman and knowing deep down she is a fraud.
Oh if she knew…if she had known…
She thinks staring into the flames that she might have killed herself there and then though that is a sin in her religion as well as this heathen one.
There is blood, so much blood, it sticks to the walls and though she lies there waiting for the inevitable she cannot help but think how red the blood is. It is on her hands on her face, in between her legs. She is thirteen and her life is over. She has been defiled by what they so laughing call themselves, a soldier of Christ. They have come through her Aunt and Uncle's home and killed her mentally and now they will kill her physically. They are right now ransacking the place for whatever they can get, killing the birds, eating them, raping the woman for fun. They are bloodthirsty and out for revenge. There have been terrible losses and in a war there are always human casualties. Someone has to be there to sop up a soldiers never ending desire for revenge.
She does not know this yet. By Allah she will know it soon.
The soldier calls himself Gideon. He takes her from her home and chains her to the bunk in his little tent and uses her time and time again. He jokes and passes her around to his friends and uses her like she is sport and she grits her teeth as the pain of his injuries come down on her time and time again. She will not beg for her life. She will not prostate herself for a pardon for this King who she does not recognise. She is a daughter of the true religion and her family are dead she will great them in Paradise with her head held as high as she can make it.
And then one day she does not.
She does not know what happens, a skirmish of Saracen raiders perhaps, Saladin sending a scouting party or perhaps these English have let themselves go and they do not care that they attract attention the way a piece of rotten meat attracts flies.
She does not dream of being rescued. There is not one solider in this camp—well maybe the man they call Thomas—who cares enough to see her live. After all she is a prisoner of war. There are always more Saracen girls around for the English to abuse. In the same way she supposes the other side would react if they were on that island that they talk about with such reverence.
She awaits the inevitable. She is naked and chained to a bed and defiant despite it all to the very end but after the screaming dies down the curtain opens and another man comes in. He is of her land and though he is covered in blood and the stench of it once again sticks to the room he looks at her and his eyes are very kind.
"Ah my darling girl" he says gently and he unchains her from the bed and pushes her into a sitting position. "We are here now."
She thinks stupidly that this is a rescue party. That these men have come to rescue her but she chases the thought straight out of her head as soon as she thinks it. It is not true and to think such things is foolish. To say them is even more foolish and will not be born.
She has learnt a hard lesson in the last two years. Do not speak your thoughts of the enemy will cut out your tongue.
He gives her food and water and he wraps her up in a red sheet.
"We are here to see justice done for our people" he says as she drinks. "We did not think to find many alive. Be rest assured you will never suffer such indignity again."
It feels she thinks a bit like a dream though she knows it is not.
He helps her to a horse or at least he tries to but Gideon is there on his knees and she reacts. She wants vengeance, she craves it as she once craved death and now she has the opportunity she grabs a knife and with one swoop of upper body strength she has had the fingers of his right hand cut off by the root.
He screams and she turns to her rescuer who is watching as she stands there naked and bleeding and burnt and he nods looking at her as if she is a golden statue that might be worth some value.
Gideon screams again.
He screams a lot that long blood night as Gisella gets her revenge.
She breaths in and she breaths out and next to her, her sister though unconscious and bound does the same.
Even now she cannot bring herself to feel anything other than sheer joy at the reminder.
Memoires are a powerful tool she has found.
His name is Az-Zahir Ghazi and he is the third son of Saladin. He rules most of the north. He is only five or so years older than she is and he takes her to his house and gives her life again.
She is bathed and clean and takes her prayers in the Mosque.
It comes with a price though when he tells her that she is beautiful, that she is desirable and she realises that she is to become not his slave but his lover. However he is gentle and tender and he treats her well and she finds herself in love with him.
"What do you want?" he askes her one night his hand on her warm belly and she thinks that she would like to feel that rising desire that comes with his quick fingers that she never thought she would feel but the truth comes out. The truth always comes out with him.
"I want to fight so I can kill any man that lays hands upon me again"
He laughs and kisses her and it is as light as a feather and though she feels desire rise within her at his touch she thinks there is always calculation in her kiss more so than love.
And still she does not sleep.
But teach her he does. He has a powerful tight body and he teaches her to kill and dance while she does it. He teaches her at her insistence the ways to make a man scream and a woman beg for mercy. He knows her desire for revenge and when she goes for days at a time to hunt down English soldiers in the villages, in the camps she finds that with each thrust of her daggers she takes a bit more of the power that was robbed from her back.
She does enjoy him, his company and his body but she is seventeen and though he has a hard flank and rocklike muscle and he can make her moan with pleasure she knows enough to know that a mistress and an assassin is all she is going to get. There is no children (she suspects damage done when she was being held captive by those English soldiers takes care of that) and soon she takes herbs to stop her monthly bleed. Sex becomes a calculated move. Indeed nothing she does is free of calculation.
Soon she goes with him when he comes for raids. The soldiers watch her and they fear her. She is more dedicated in her quest for revenge and indeed most of the assassins that Saladin employs, the bodyguards for his son watch her with fear in their eyes as she strings up a man in front of his captive company and drags out what should be a quick death into a week. She sparks fear when she sets a General on fire and both sides call her a killer.
She wears red, red for blood, red for revenge, red for the whore she is and though she suspects deep down she frightens him Zahir lets her crawl into bed with him and he holds her when the nightmares come at night and she is unable to sleep.
He saves her from the nightmares and she saves him from assassination. Twice he is saved because they underestimate the woman in the bed. The English have always underestimated woman. They are a country that has had many Queens and the one who ruled Eleanor, was once the most brutal woman of them all. They are stupid and dirty.
Zahir giggles.
"We do not underestimate woman" he says to her and she grins. She's between his legs and she knows the comment is more to do with that than anything else but she knows that he does not underestimate her.
Indeed it is because of that, that he tells her that her sister is still alive.
"I have heard correspondence from a man in a place called Nottingham. He is in correspondence with a Spy in the King's camp. They are putting together a plan to relieve my father of this menace and he fears an Outlaw. An old solider. He travels with a Saracen woman. I asked questions and he got me the information gathered. It is Saffia, your sister. She is alive"
She takes the parchment and reads it and there is an explosion of anger inside of her.
Her sister.
Saffia and her are different. They have not been close and she chalks that down to the simple fact that her sister has always been their father's darling, To their father his eldest was his pet and he treated her as such to what she had assumed was their death. The loss of her mother and brother had seen their sister move to assume control and within weeks the house was scrubbed of all remembrance of them. She was going to be the physician but Gisella was expected to marry and though she supposed they must have loved each other in the contradictory way that sisters did but there had been no warmth in their relationship. There had been nothing whatsoever that she could remember and even so she could not forget that her sister had been the one to rob her of those final moments with her father. It had been her sister that had sent her to her Aunts, to the frontline, to Gideon. She had been prepared to go with their father, she had, had it all agreed and then…
"No Gisella will go. There is no need for her. You need a boy Papa. You need me. Not her"
She sees the parchment to the flames and watches it.
"I will have her life"
"I figured as much" he says in wry amusement.
"Go to the godforsaken place. See that the plan is going ahead and see your sister consigned to the shadows of the afterlife. And then come back here and we will rid our land of that King Richard and his ilk"
She nods though she barely hears herself think.
She is here two months later.
She watches at first and she does not mean to get involved but that blonde girl reminds her too much of herself and so she kills all of them, the men, the knights and she passes past the broken dark haired girl on the floor and stares down at her sister her outfit as red as her emotions and she stares at the shorn hair and the fact that she is naked and she feels a surge of sick satisfaction that the woman is here looing old and tired and injured.
There is nothing left in Gisella but calculation and self-preservation.
But she looks at her sister and she won't feel anything.
Things have to be done.
And all of these moments lead to this moment right here.
Saffia wakes up as she always did when they were children. Fast and quick and desperate to start the day. Gisella stares at her opposite the fire. There is no mask, no weapons, nothing guarding them as her sister takes her noticing no doubt the changes. She lets her. Gisella over the years has become one of the best assassins to ever grace the Holy Land.
This is just one more kill.
One more kill to be done.
And then the Woman in Red will rest.
And there you go. I hope you like it and I will get the next chapter to you sooner rather than later.
Next Chapter-Djaq wakes up and she and her sister talk in which the pain of the past is discussed and the battle lines are drawn. Trigger Warnings for the next chapter.