The other three men sat in silence for a long time. At last Saladin stood up, went over to Arn, pulled him to his feet, and embraced him. As he was known to do whenever he witnessed anything sensitive, cruel, or beautiful, he wept. Saladin’s tears were famous, much scorned and much admired in the world of both Christians and Muslims.
“You have saved me, you have given me the answer, and you have thereby saved many lives in Jerusalem next month, and perhaps have saved the city for us for all eternity,” Saladin sobbed.
His brother and son were moved by his tears, but they were able to control themselves.
A month later Arn found himself in Saladin’s army outside the walls of Ashkelon. He was dressed in his old clothes, which had been repaired and mended, as was his entire coat of chain mail; they were all in better condition than when he had lost them. But he was not alone in wearing the mantle of a Templar knight; the Grand Master, Gérard de Ridefort, was also clad in like attire. He and King Guy de Lusignan accompanied the army more as baggage than as riders. They each sat atop their own camel, holding on as best they could. Saladin had found it safer to put them on animals that they could not ride rather than on horses. The Saracens had amused themselves greatly, during five days of moving camp, as they watched the two valuable prisoners trying to ease their riding pains and at the same time look dignified as they rode in the file of camels just behind the cavalry itself.
Saladin had sent a fleet from Alexandria to meet them at Ashkelon, and the ships already lay at anchor, threatening the city, by the time the Saracen army arrived by land. But the fleet looked more menacing than it was, because it was a trading fleet without soldiers and with its holds empty.
When they pitched camp outside the city walls, Saladin allowed Guy de Lusignan to walk up to the locked city gate. There he called out for the inhabitants to surrender, and then their king would be set free. What was a single city compared with the king himself?
The residents of the city did not share this opinion, as they soon demonstrated. King Guy’s words had no effect but to incite the citizens to throw rotten fruit and rubbish at him from up in the tower by the city gate. They scorned him as brutally as any king had ever been scorned by his subjects.
Saladin was amused by the spectacle and refused to be disheartened by its result. He left the major part of the army in place to start work on taking Ashkelon by force, and he then continued south toward Gaza.
On the walls of Gaza stood a few Templar knights in white mantles, and a good number of sergeants. They did not let themselves be frightened by the insignificant army that now pitched camp outside their walls, nor did they have any reason to feel fear. The enemy had not brought up any catapults or other siege engines to knock down walls.
Nor were they affected by the fact that their Grand Master had just been led up to the city gate. They expected to be threatened, and if they did not surrender, they assumed their Grand Master would be executed before their eyes.
But they would not be budged by such a threat. The Rule was crystal clear in such circumstances. A Templar knight could not be ransomed for gold or other prisoners or in response to threats. The duty of the Grand Master was thus to die like a Templar knight without complaint and without showing fear. Besides, few of them would find it very lamentable to see Gérard de Ridefort’s head roll in the sand. Whoever they elected as the next Grand Master was bound to be better than the fool that had caused their great defeat.
But to their dismay and utter shame, something else now occurred. Gérard de Ridefort stepped forward and gave an order as Grand Master that the city was to be evacuated immediately. Every man would be allowed to take his own weapons and a horse with him, but everything else, even the well-filled treasure chests, must be left behind.
The Rule left no room to refuse to obey the Grand Master.
An hour later the evacuation of Gaza was completed. Arn sat on his horse and watched the march out of the city, and he wept with shame before Gérard de Ridefort’s treason.
When the last horses in the column of Templar knights had exited the city gates, Gérard was given his own Frankish horse and was bidden farewell and good luck by Saladin with cheerful but ironic words. Gérard said not a word; he turned his horse and rode off toward his Templar knights. Slowly and with heads bowed as if in a funeral procession, they set off to the north along the shore. Without speaking to any of them he moved to the head of the column.
Satisfied, Saladin declared that he had now won two victories. First, thanks to a man with no spine, he had captured Gaza and its well-filled coffers without having to shoot a single arrow. Second, he had made Gérard de Ridefort once again take command of the remnants of the Knights Templar army. A man like Gérard served Saladin better than he served his own forces.
Saladin’s men had immediately stormed into the conquered city, but some of them came back, looking agitated and bringing to Saladin two horses which they claimed were Anaza. Such horses were not owned by Saladin or even the Caliph of Baghdad.
Saladin said that he was happier for this gift than for all the gold that was found in the Templars’ coffers inside the fortress. When he asked those around him whether these horses found with the Templar knights could indeed be Anaza, Arn told him it was so. The horses had once belonged to him, given to him by Ibrahim ibn Anaza at the same time as he received the holy sword.
Saladin did not hesitate to give them back to Arn at once.
Three days later Ashkelon fell. Saladin spared the city’s inhabitants even though they had not voluntarily surrendered the city. He let them all go aboard the waiting fleet that would take them to Alexandria. Since Alexandria had extensive trade across the sea with both Pisa and Genoa, it was only a matter of time before all these Franks from Ashkelon would be back where they belonged.
Now only Tyrus and Jerusalem were left.
On Friday the seventh day of the month of Rajab, the very day when the Prophet, peace be unto him, had climbed to the seventh Heaven from the Rock of Abraham after his miraculous journey from Mecca that night, Saladin began his entry into Jerusalem. According to the Christians’ reckoning of time, it was Friday the second of October in the year of Grace 1187.
The city had been impossible to defend. The only knight in the city of any importance outside the almost eradicated orders of knights was Balian d’Ibelin. Besides himself he had counted only two knights among the defenders and had therefore knighted every man over the age of sixteen. But mounting a defense would have been meaningless; it would only have prolonged the torment. More than ten thousand refugees from the immediate surroundings had streamed in behind the city gates the week before Saladin arrived. This meant that the city’s supplies of both water and food would not hold out in the end.
The city was not plundered. Not a single inhabitant was murdered.
Ten thousand of the city’s citizens were able to pay for their freedom: ten dinars for men, five for women, and one for a child. Those who paid for their freedom were also allowed to carry away their belongings. But twenty thousand inhabitants of Jerusalem were left in the city because they were unable to pay. Nor could they borrow from the patriarch Heraclius or from the two spiritual orders of knights, who like Heraclius had chosen to take with them their treasures in heavy loads instead of saving Christian brothers and sisters from the slavery that threatened those who could not afford freedom.
Many of Saladin’s emirs wept in despair when they saw the patriarch Heraclius happy to pay his ten dinars and then leave with a cargo of gold that would have been enough to pay for the safe conduct of most of the remaining twenty thousand Christians.