Arn not surprisingly held an entirely different view. He thought that the victory at Mont Gisard showed that God had protected those of his believers who stood closest to Him, for He had favored the Christians in such a way that it could only be explained as divine intervention. Gaza had been spared because Saladin wanted a greater prize, and the siege force outside Ashkelon had been too small. Instead of heading directly toward Jerusalem, Saladin had allowed his once unconquerable army to disperse to plunder. The fog had favored the side that had the smaller force to lead at Mont Gisard. And as if this were not enough, Arn and his brothers had had the improbable good luck to ride blindly to the precise spot where the Mameluke cavalry would pass. And as if this were still not enough, the attack by the Knights Templar came exactly at the spot where the enemy had the most difficulty both defending themselves and regrouping to counterattack.
All this in a single context was too much to be explained away as mere luck or skill. On the contrary, it was proof that the belief in Jesus Christ was the true path, and that Muhammad, peace be unto him, was a prophet inspired by God but not the messenger for the one truth. For how could the miracle at Mont Gisard otherwise be explained?
Emir Moussa ventured another explanation. When God saw how the faithful were on their way to crush the Christians, who were nevertheless human beings like any other human beings, then God had turned his back on all of them. After that, human errors and not God’s will had prevailed.
For the the faithful had demonstrably committed a long series of mistakes, just as Al Ghouti had enumerated. The errors were due mostly to arrogance, the fact that they believed victory was assured long before the first real battle was fought. Such arrogance was always punished in every war, in ways both small and large. He who had war as his profession and was old enough must have seen a thousand idiotic decisions and another thousand lucky ones that determined the difference between life and death. These things always happened. And wasn’t it boastful to believe that God always participated in every little battle that His children fought? Yes, for otherwise God would not have much else to do other than rush from one war to another and from one battle to the next. So as far as Mont Gisard was concerned, a combination of human pride and the usual fortunes of war might be the simplest explanation.
Neither Arn nor Fahkr would agree to that. Fahkr thought that it was blasphemy to believe that God would turn His back on His warriors during jihad. And Arn thought that if war was being waged close to God’s Grave, then He would not choose to be busy somewhere else.
And so they were back to the question of whose set of beliefs represented the true faith. No one would yield on that point, and Fahkr, who was an expert negotiator, then led the discussion to the only point on which they could agree. They could not know whether God punished those who in His name advanced in jihad toward Jerusalem, or if He was protecting those who in His name defended Jerusalem. If they did not know whether God was showing mercy or doling out punishment, then they could not say whether the message of the Prophet, peace be unto him, was the true one, or whether it was the message that came from Jesus Christ, peace be unto him as well.
Arn’s fortress master brother Siegfried de Turenne, whose name in his own language was spelled Thüringen, was one of the Knights Templar who was wounded at Mont Gisard. Arn had convinced him to seek treatment for his wounds in Gaza, but he hadn’t explained why he thought there would be better care in Gaza than in Siegfried’s own fortress Castel Arnald up in the Ramle region.
What Arn had not told his brother was that the doctors at the fortress in Gaza were Saracens. Some among the Templar knights found it outrageous to employ Saracen doctors. It was mostly the new brothers who held such views, and it was the same among the worldly Franks in Outremer. Those who had just arrived usually held the view that all Saracens should be killed with impunity as soon as they were discovered. Even Arn had entertained such simplistic beliefs when he served his first year in the white mantle. But that was long ago, and Arn, like most brothers who had long served in the Holy Land, had learned that Saracen doctors were able to heal more than twice as many wounded as Frankish doctors did. More experienced brothers usually joked that if one fine day you lay wounded on the battlefield, the safest doctor to treat you was one from Damascus, the next safest no doctor at all, and the surely fatal one was Frankish.
Naturally there was a difference between what belonged to this world and what was faith. Some fortress masters and high brothers would probably agree, based on their own experience, that Saracen doctors were more skilled. Yet they still wouldn’t rely on the unbelievers because that would be considered sinful.
Arn used to joke about such opinions, saying that it was truly odd for a man to be allowed to live because of his sin and die as punishment for his purity of faith. Going to Paradise because you died on the battlefield was one thing, but going there because you had neglected your health in the sickbed was hardly the same.
As Arn had instinctively felt, Brother Siegfried belonged to those who because of their faith would rely only on unskilled doctors. But Siegfried was brought to Gaza on a stretcher, and at that moment he was in no condition to raise objections. An arrow had bored through his shoulder and shoulder blade, and a lance had penetrated deep into his left thigh. A Frankish doctor might have done something that would have cost him both his arm and his leg.
Initially Siegfried had strongly criticized Arn for his trick of leaving him in unclean hands. But the two doctors Utman ibn Khattab and Abd al-Malik had first succeeded in removing the arrow point despite the fact that it had penetrated all the way into the shoulder blade. Then using various herbal drinks they had quickly brought down the fever caused by the wound and thoroughly cleansed the opening with brandy, which burned like fire but also purified the wound. After only ten days Siegfried noticed how his wound was starting to heal, and soon he could move his arm, although the doctors immediately tried to stop him and in broken Frankish admonished him to lie still.
As Siegfried grew noticeably better he also began to observe with greater interest the huge differences that existed between Gaza and his own fortress when it came to treating the wounded. The first big difference he noticed was that here in Gaza the wounded lay high up in the fortress, cool and dry, and each bed was far away from its neighbor so that the wounded could hardly speak with one another. The cool air was no cause for concern, for each of the patients were bedded in both linen and pelts. The fact that this would have any importance for the healing of wounds was hard to believe, but it was pleasant to lie in clean bed linen.
All the arrow slots were furnished with wooden shutters to keep out the wind and rain, which seemed an unnecessary bother. If they had done as they did elsewhere, the wounded would have been kept down below in a grain storage chamber. But the Saracen doctors clearly insisted on keeping plenty of fresh air and a low temperature in the infirmatoriumitself. This was not the first time Siegfried had been wounded, so he could compare this treatment to previous experiences.
Besides the temperature and ventilation, the big difference was in the absence of prayers in connection with the treatment, which was also quite minimal for most of the wounded brothers. After the Saracen doctors had washed and dressed the wounds, they mostly let the men rest; they didn’t continually come running with new poultices, warming cow manure and other things that a wounded man might usually expect. On rare occasions the doctors would cauterize the wounds with red-hot irons, if the evil could not be washed away with the searing brandy. When such things were to be done, Arn de Gothia himself would come up with some sergeants in tow who would hold down the unfortunate patient while he was treated with the glowing iron.