Arn did not reply to the count’s insults because he had not the slightest idea how to handle the uncomfortable situation in which he now found himself. He was a guest of the Hospitallers, but a guest of necessity. And he had never before heard such affronts spoken about the Templars. For the sake of his honor a Templar knight could draw his weapon, but the Rule also forbade any Templar knight from killing or mistreating a Christian. The punishment was the loss of his mantle. So Arn could not defend himself with his sword. Nor with words.
Yet his submissive silence did not put a stop to Count Raymond, who had lost a stepson in the battle and was in despair like all the others in the room over the crushing defeat. The presence of an odious young Templar knight at the same table provoked his wrath.
As if to put Arn in his place once and for all, he repeated some of the last things he had said about the filthy brutes who didn’t even know what the Koran was, and understood the Saracens even less.
At last a bright idea entered Arn’s head. He raised his wine glass to Count Raymond and spoke the language of the Saracens to him.
“In the name of the Merciful and Compassionate, honored Count Raymond, bear in mind the words of the Lord as we now drink together: And from the fruits of the date palm and the grapevine you shall extract both wine and healthful sustenance; in this there is certainly a message to him who employs his reason.”
Arn sipped his wine slowly, set his Syrian wine glass carefully on the table, and looked at Count Raymond without rancor, but without lowering his gaze.
“Were those really the words of the Koran? About drinking wine?” asked Count Raymond after a long, tense silence in the room.
“Yes, indeed,” replied Arn quietly. “They are from the sixteenth sura, the sixty-seventh verse, and it bears thinking about. In the previous verse it does say that milk is preferable. But it does bear thinking about.”
Count Raymond sat in silence for a moment, gazing intently at Arn, before he suddenly asked a question in Arabic.
“Where, Templar knight, did you learn the language of the unbelievers? I learned it during ten years of captivity in Aleppo, but surely you have not been a captive, have you?”
“No, I have not, as you may well understand,” replied Arn in the same language. “I learned from those who worked for us among the believers. The fact that I, unlike yourself, am forbidden to submit to captivity was made quite evident from what we saw today outside the walls. It pains me, count, that you speak so ill of my dead brothers. They died for God, they died for the Holy Land and for God’s Grave. But they also died for you and yours.”
“Who is this Templar knight?” Count Raymond then asked in Frankish. His question seemed to be directed at the weapons master of the Hospitallers.
“That, Count Raymond,” said the weapons master, “is the victor of Mont Gisard, when two hundred Templar knights conquered three thousand Mamelukes. That is the man whom the Saracens call Al Ghouti. With all respect, count, I would therefore like to ask you, as long as you are our guest, to pay more attention to your language.”
Everyone now looked at Count Raymond without saying a word. He was the master of Tripoli and the foremost knight of the Franks, used to commanding any table at which he sat. The predicament he now found himself in was an unfamiliar one for him. But he was a man with great experience of both his own and others’ mistakes, and he decided to repair as quickly as possible the unnecessary dilemma that he had precipitated.
“I have been an ass here this evening,” he said with a sigh followed by a smile. “The only redeeming feature I possess as an ass, however, is that unlike other asses I know when I’ve made a mistake. I shall now do something that I have never done in my life.”
With these words he got up and strode across the room to Arn, pulled him to his feet and embraced him. Then he fell to his knees to beg forgiveness.
Arn blushed and stammered that it was not right for a worldly man to humble himself so before a Templar knight.
In this odd way a long friendship was begun between two men who in many respects stood far apart, but who both stood closer to the Saracens than did other Christians.
That evening they were soon left alone in the three rooms of the Hospitallers’ fortress master. Count Raymond had taken a seat next to Arn and insisted that they both speak only Arabic so that all the others would be shut out of their conversation, which was his initial intention. Once they were left alone, which had also been his intention, and he ordered more wine as if he were at home in one of his own fortresses, Count Raymond still wanted to continue their conversation in Arabic. For as he said, the walls had ears everywhere in Outremer, and some of what he had to tell Arn might be called treason by malicious people.
And people of malice now held the power in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which could lead to the greatest defeat. Not a defeat like the recent one at Marj Ayyoun; that was only one of a thousand battles waged over many years, and the Saracens and Christians had each won about an equal number. Raymond himself had been victorious more than a hundred times, but had lost almost as often.
Worst of all the malicious people was the king’s mother, Agnes de Courtenay, who now had insinuated herself into the court in Jerusalem and actually had become the one who had the greatest say in matters. Her various lovers were those who acquired power. They were all newly arrived tenderfeet, and behaved as one did at a royal court in Paris or Rome; they dressed in the courtly manner and divided their time between instigating base intrigues and committing unmentionable sins with small boys from the slave market. Agnes de Courtenay’s latest lover was a fop named Lusignan, and he was scheming to get the king’s sister Sibylla married off to a younger brother named Guy. If that happened, little brother Lusignan could soon become king of Jerusalem. The days of the young but leprous Baldwin IV were numbered.
For Arn these were mostly incomprehensible matters that Count Raymond began complaining about more and more loudly as he drank, and urged Arn to drink more too. It was another world, a world in which God did not exist, where God’s Grave was guarded not by devoted believers but by intriguers and those who consorted with donkeys and slave boys. It was like looking down into Hell, as it was said that the Prophet, peace be unto him, had to do when he climbed up the ladder to Heaven from the rock beneath the Temple of the Lord.
When Count Raymond eventually realized that he was blurting out too many things that the childlike but honest young Templar knight did not understand, he switched to discussing the latest lost battle at Marj Ayyoun.
They soon agreed, now that no one could hear them, that it was not so much their own mistakes as Saladin’s cunning that had turned the tide against them. Either Saladin had had extraordinary good luck, as the Templar knights had experienced at Mont Gisard, or with uncanny skill he had done everything right. He must have planned the whole thing in advance, for when he attacked earlier in the spring he had only had a small army, and now he had come with a force five times as strong. The Christians had not realized this until it was too late. So his victory was fully justified.
Even though the wine had now gone to Arn’s head, he tried to argue against the idea of a justified victory for the enemy, but he could offer no valid objections. On the contrary, after a few more glasses he had to agree with the count’s conclusion; so he changed the subject out of sheer embarrassment. He asked Count Raymond why he hated the Knights Templar.
Count Raymond retreated a bit and told him that there were a few Templar knights, including Arn, or Al Ghouti rather, whom he did admire. Foremost among them was Arnoldo de Torroja, Jerusalem’s Master. If God would ever involve Himself in a good way in the situation in the Holy Land, then Arnoldo de Torroja should be the next Grand Master. By now Odo de Saint Armand was either dead or taken captive, which in the case of Templar knights was usually the same as death. According to Count Raymond, Arnoldo de Torroja was one of the few high Templars who grasped the sole important issue for a Christian future in Outremer. They would have to make peace with Saladin. They had to divide Jerusalem, no matter how painful it might be, so that all pilgrims, even Jews, had equal right to the city’s holy places.