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  “I think I better fetch an armorer, Philip,” Balian told Philip after a moment of inspection.

  “He’ll want to cut it open!” Philip protested with a new kind of panic. Unlike Balian who was heir to the lordship of Beirut, son of one of the richest men in both Syria and Cyprus, Philip was an orphan. His father, a knight from Lombardy, had died during the first siege of Damietta when he was only twelve. A Cypriot, Sir Peter Chappe, had taken Philip under his wing, letting him serve as his page until Philip’s skill at reading earned him the patronage of a more powerful lord, Sir Ralph of Tiberias. The latter had been nearing death, however, and Philip had soon found himself without a lord, let alone a fief. Balian’s father had rescued him by bestowing a small Cypriot fief upon him and sending him to serve as a squire in his brother’s household, where he had met and befriended Balian. Philip had spent all the cash he could raise from his one fief just to outfit himself—and now his expensive helm was in risk of being ruined beyond repair.

  “Very probably,” Balian agreed calmly, and Philip knew his friend just couldn’t understand. Balian’s armor had cost twice as much in the first place, and he wouldn’t have given a thought to replacing it on a whim. Balian didn’t hesitate to wear silk surcoats on the tiltyard either or buy a sword with an enameled pommel or a saddle with ivory inlays.

  “Balian! I can’t afford a new helmet!” Philip protested in exasperation.

  “You can’t exactly spend the rest of your life wearing that one either,” Balian retorted practically. “You can’t drink or eat in it for a start. I’m going to fetch the armorer. Andre?” He turned to his friend’s young, inexperienced and frightened squire.

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “Draw a cold bath for Sir Philip. When we get him out of that thing, he’s going to need to cool off. He very likely got a concussion and doesn’t even know it yet.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “I’ll be right back, Philip,” Balian assured his friend, and ducked under the partially opened tent flap.

  Outside Philip’s tent, Balian was in a city of canvas. Literally, hundreds of lords and knights had pitched their tents on the plain west of Limassol to take part in this sporting event. Tournaments had been popular in France and Flanders for nearly a century, but for most of that time, the knights and lords of Outremer had been engaged in too much real warfare against the Saracens to seek mock combat. The last decades, however, had been comparatively settled due to squabbling between the heirs of al-Adil. With the Ayyubids fighting among themselves, the Franks had been given a respite from war, and their appetite for sport had grown commensurately.

  Although the actual lists were a couple hundred yards away, the dust churned up by the jousting wafted on the wind across the tent city, turning the air a murky beige and the sound of cheering and shouting was only slightly dampened. Clearly, the current joust was exciting the crowd because the shouts and collective groans seemed particularly intense. Balian, however, only glanced in the direction of the lists, knowing that the matches scheduled for this afternoon did not include any of his friends or family. Instead, he tried to decide the best way through the rows of tents to the armorers who had set up shops along the far periphery.

  He had only gone a few steps when a new roar of agitation rose from the bleachers. People seemed to be shouting, “Stop! Stop!”

  Balian paused to look in the direction of the lists and saw a little man come storming out on foot. It was Sir Amaury Barlais. He was covered with sand, evidently from a tumble, but that was hardly unusual. What was striking was that he was beet red with fury as he cursed and gestured. “I’ll kill him! I swear! I’ll kill him! He was cheating! It was obvious! If they refuse to see that, they’re all cheats and liars!”

  Two other knights were running after him, his cousin Sir Grimbert de Bethsan and Sir Gauvain de Cheveché. “Amaury, you might be right that Sir Toringuel was cheating, but it does you no good to accuse the baillie of being in cahoots with him—”

  “Why shouldn’t I? Damn it! Toringuel is Ibelin’s knight. If he was cheating, it was with his knowledge and consent!”

  Balian flinched at such an accusation. Aside from being baillie, his uncle was an Ibelin, and he had been raised to believe that all Ibelins had an obligation to live by the very highest standards of chivalry. From the time he was a little boy, it had been beaten into him that as an Ibelin he had to be more honest, more charitable, more loyal, more diligent, more persistent, more courageous, more compassionate—in short more noble than other men. That he didn’t always live up to that ideal was obvious, but he had never expected to hear anyone impute that his uncle fell short of the highest standards. People might not like all of his policies, but Balian had never before heard anyone accuse his uncle of anything dishonorable.

  Sir Grimbert made a second attempt to calm Barlais. “You don’t know that, Amaury. If you’re so sure Sir Toringuel was cheating, then demand an inspection of his weapons, but don’t lash out at the judges! That only makes them disinclined to support you!”

  “They’re all a bunch of bastards!” Barlais insisted, his rage so intense that his veins were pulsing in his temples as he tore off his coif and arming cap. He was in his mid-thirties and his hair was thinning over angular features that made Balian’s friend Philip de Novare compare him to a weasel. The latter image was reinforced because he wore his short, brown hair slicked back away from his sharp face. He ducked back into a tent like a rodent going to earth, but as Balian passed by he was still raging, “I’ll kill him! I swear, I’ll kill him!”

  Limassol, Cyprus

  May 19, 1224

  Philip d’Ibelin, baillie of Cyprus for the seven-year-old King Henry I, had built a palace in Limassol. It did not rival his brother’s palace in Beirut because the latter was set above the mighty walls of the citadel of Beirut, giving it spectacular views in all directions, but Philip’s palace at Limassol was pleasant and impressive in its own way. It sat beside the shore, offering views of the Mediterranean, and contained three large interior courtyards.

  One of these enclosed a formal garden with a fountain at the center like the cloisters of a monastery. Here sunlight was angling through the encircling arcade, casting golden arches on the green-and-cream tiles paving the walkway. The columns supporting the arches were polished marble and the capitals were elaborately carved with foliage and beasts. A light breeze off the sea gently swayed the tips of the tall cypress trees at the four corners of the garden, and birds twittered in the oleander bushes.

  “I think you can be pleased with the way things have gone so far,” Philip d’Ibelin remarked to his elder brother John as they strolled under the arcade. The individual contests were over now, and everyone had returned to their lodgings to rest, bathe and dress for tonight’s feast and festivities. Tomorrow there would be the melee and then theater followed by a feast with more singing, dancing and poetry contests.

  John d’Ibelin, Lord of Beirut, was 45 years old, two years older than his host. He was tall, like all Ibelins, and being a vigorous man (he would lead his own troop in the melee tomorrow), he had a sleek, almost slender figure despite his age. His brown hair was bleached and his face tanned by too much exposure to the Syrian sun. Although a good-looking man, he was sober and serious by nature, something reflected in the lines on his face. He frowned now, too. “Balian was flirting with every single damsel of the kingdom—and half the ladies too! It was embarrassing!”

  “Don’t be so hard on him, John,” Philip answered with a smile. “I was no different at his age.”

  “And I was ashamed of you too!” John quipped back, making them both laugh.

  “But you shouldn’t have been,” Philip countered in a gentle voice when the laughter faded. “The bolder maidens all but threw themselves at him, and the shyer ones were breathless just watching him.”

  “It will go to his head!” John grumbled.

  “For a day or two,” the younger Ibelin conceded.

  John eyed his brother reproachfully, and with a laugh, Philip revised his statement. “All right. For a month or two, maybe even a year or two, but eventually he’ll realize it isn’t worth much. Don’t forget he’s been with me these past three years. I’ve had ample opportunity to watch him mature. Yes, he’s a bit full of himself at the moment, but what do you expect after the festival you organized for him, John? Balian enjoys life. If he’s happy and having fun, he embraces the whole world. That doesn’t mean he can’t be serious and determined when he needs to be. He had a terrible time with the crossbow for some reason, but rather than saying it was a ‘common’ weapon as many another noble youth has done, he put in extra time trying to master it, practicing—literally—until his fingers bled.”

  John looked hard at his brother. “I want to believe you. He’s my heir. I want him to be worthy of our father’s name.”

  “That’s a heavy burden, John. Can you say without hesitation that we have lived up to our father’s expectations?”

  John smiled at that, but it was a sad smile accompanied by a sigh. “His expectations? Certainly. But only because his humility extended to us as well as to himself. ‘We can only be what God has made us,’ he said again and again. ‘Be the best you can be, but do not strive to be that which God has not given you the means to achieve.’” The Lord of Beirut fell silent, remembering his father’s words.

  Philip gave his brother a moment to reflect before asking gently, “And you think that Balian is in some way able but unwilling to fulfill his role in life?”

  John answered with a sigh.

  Philip pressed him. “In what way is Balian unworthy of his name? He is bright. Sharp as a whip, actually, even if he doesn’t have a scholarly bone in his body. He’s courageous almost to a fault. He’s a superb horsema
n and an outstanding swordsman—even if he’s less good with a lance and I wouldn’t want to trust my life to his archery. He’s generous and, for a seventeen-year-old, devout. True, he enjoys his wine, but he doesn’t get belligerent when he drinks too much, just mellow and sleepy.” Philip fell silent running out of things to say.

  “He’s too emotional,” John answered, looking Philip straight in the eye. “He’s ruled by his emotions rather than his reason. He feels before he thinks. That is dangerous.”

  Philip thought about this a moment and then remarked softly. “He’s more like me in that regard too, but emotions aren’t bad, John—only acting upon them without reflecting first. He’ll learn to do that. Just give him time.”

  “Hmm,” John grunted ambiguously, but then pointed out, “Acting without reflecting is certainly what our niece Alice did when she married Antioch. She would appear to have let her passion run away with her completely. As I understand it, she didn’t so much as inform the High Court of Cyprus, much less ask permission. Not to mention she abandoned her children as if they meant no more to her than a pair of old shoes!” Beirut’s indignation sharpened his words.

  The brothers were in accord on this subject. The Dowager Queen of Cyprus, Alice of Champagne, was their niece. She was the daughter of their late half-sister Queen Isabella of Jerusalem. She had been betrothed to King Hugh of Cyprus when they were both infants, married to him at the age of fifteen, and widowed at the age of 23. Unlike her mother Isabella of Jerusalem, Alice of Champagne had never taken an interest in actually ruling her kingdom. Her husband had commended his kingdom to Philip d’Ibelin on his deathbed, and the High Court of Cyprus had confirmed and legalized their dead king’s wish by electing Philip d’Ibelin baillie of Cyprus. Alice had willingly turned over the burdens of government to her Uncle Philip—on the condition she retained the better part of the revenues. The barons and knights of Cyprus had taken oaths to Philip d’Ibelin as their liege “until King Henry came of age.”

  Alice of Champagne was now 29, however, and she had remarried—without the consent of either her uncles or her barons—a man of her own choosing: Bohemond, Prince Antioch. No one objected to a dowager queen remarrying. John and Philip d’Ibelin were the children of such a union. In the case of Alice of Champagne, however, the High Court was angry and outraged because they mistrusted Antioch.

  Philip expressed these fears bluntly. “If Antioch sets foot on this island, I wouldn’t give poor Henry a year to live!” Philip had been the young king’s surrogate father ever since he assumed the bailliage when Henry was just nine months old. “Antioch wants this island for his own. He wants to see his sons inherit it. If Antioch comes to Cyprus, he will find a way to remove Henry and, bitch that Alice is, she’ll probably aid and abet him in it!”

  “I do presume you are talking about a different Alice,” a female voice surprised the brothers.

  They turned sharply to face the speaker. John bowed deeply to his sister-in-law, Alys de Montbéliard, while Philip raised her hand to his lips and assured her, “we were talking of the queen.”

  “In that case,” she agreed with a mischievous smile, “’bitch’ is almost too good a word—or rather an insult to female dogs.”

  Alys de Montbéliard was not a beauty and never had been. The sister of the man who had ruled Cyprus during the late King Hugh’s minority, her marriage to Philip d’Ibelin had been entirely political. The Montbéliards and Ibelins had frequently been at odds, and Beirut had accused Alys’ brother Walter of plundering the royal Cypriot treasury. Alys’ marriage to Philip had been arranged as a grand reconciliation between the families, and neither party had been particularly keen about it at the time. In the subsequent twelve years, however, they had become increasingly fond of one another.

  “May I join you?” she asked the brothers, “or was this an exclusively Ibelin affair?”

  “You are always welcome, my dear,” Philip assured her.

  Alys sank down on a marble bench in the shade, her silk skirts and long bell sleeves falling gracefully about her as she looked up at them expectantly. “You were speaking of the Queen Mother, I believe,” she prompted.

  “Yes, we were saying that should Antioch come to Cyprus, we would fear for the King’s life.”

  “And rightly so. Alice of Champagne, as I was saying, has less affection for her children than a mother dog. She is, as far as I can see, completely vain and avaricious. What Bohemond sees in her I will never know, but then men are often blinded by a pretty face—present company excluded, of course.”

  “What he more likely sees in her is Cyprus itself. Antioch is rich, but it is vulnerable to Saracen attack. Cyprus is both wealthy and secure,” Beirut answered soberly.

  Alys nodded agreement. “You are probably right. Have you thought of crowning Henry king? It won’t prevent outright murder, of course, but it is considerably more difficult to set aside a crowned and anointed king than a boy who should be king.”

  “He’s only seven!” Philip protested.

  His wife shrugged and looked at her brother-in-law. John looked more thoughtful. “There’s some truth to what you say,” he remarked cautiously. “Perhaps equally important, it would bind the barons of Cyprus directly to Henry. Men are more unwilling to break an oath of fealty, particularly if their liege gives them no cause. We should give it serious thought.”

  “What about the Holy Roman Emperor?” Philip asked back. “As Henry’s overlord, he might raise objections to Henry being crowned as a child.”

  “I don’t see why,” John countered. “The subordination of Cyprus to the Holy Roman Empire has always been nominal. Richard of England took the island and the Lusignans have held it. The Holy Roman Emperors have done nothing but graciously accept Lusignan homage. Besides, if rumors are to be believed, King John of Jerusalem is close to betrothing his daughter Yolanda to Frederick Hohenstaufen.”

  “What?” Philip and Alys asked in unison.

  “Hadn’t you heard? He’s been exchanging ambassadors with the Hohenstaufen for months now. Frederick has twice taken the cross but seems singularly reluctant to actually act upon it. He let the entire expedition to Egypt languish three years ago, at great expense and tragic loss of life. I’m told that King John thinks that if the Hohenstaufen had a material interest in the Holy Land, he might be more ready and willing to fulfill his crusader vows.”

  “Material interest meaning the entire kingdom?” Alys asked sourly before her husband could get a word out.

  “Exactly,” Beirut confirmed.

  Alys and Philip looked at one another. The thought of a powerful monarch like Frederick Hohenstaufen being so near was not particularly welcome. The Lusignans had done homage to his father for the sake of raising their island lordship to a kingdom, but they had never expected to have a Holy Roman Emperor on their doorstep—or not for more than a short interlude of campaigning against the Saracens. A King of Jerusalem who was also a Holy Roman Emperor sounded ominous.

  But not as ominous as the shouting coming from inside the palace. Someone was asking loudly for “My lord Philip,” and another young voice asked even more urgently, “Where’s my uncle?” Behind them were other voices—men calling, arguing, and apparently screaming at each other.

  A moment later, Beirut’s second son Baldwin burst out of the passageway leading from the central courtyard. “My lord! Father! Come quick! Amaury Barlais and his friends waylaid Sir Toringuel in an alley and damn near killed him. In fact, there’s no surety he will survive. We managed to intervene at the last moment, but he’s badly wounded. We just managed to apprehend Barlais as he tried to flee the scene.”