Star Seeker – Book II. Jerusalem Page: 1 / 216 Star Seeker Reason and Faith René Jean-Paul Dewil Copyright ©: René Dewil Words: 129406 July 2008 Star Seeker – Book II. Jerusalem Page: 2 / 216 Book II. Jerusalem Copyright ©: René Dewil Words: 129406 July 2008 Star Seeker – Book II. Jerusalem Page: 3 / 216 Copyright Clause Copyright © René Jean-Paul Dewil 2008 René Jean-Paul Dewil is identified as the sole author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be altered without the written permission of the author. The ebook may be copied in electronic or other forms for personal use only. It may not be printed, introduced in any retrieval system, electronic or otherwise, photocopied or otherwise recorded without the prior written permission of the author. The only system where the ebook may be retrieved from is the Internet website www.theartofpainting.be, which holds the only and original text acknowledged by the author. This publication remains under copyright. Copyright ©: René Dewil Words: 129406 July 2008 Star Seeker – Book II. Jerusalem Page: 4 / 216 Table of Contents Chapter One. Antioch 1148 ........................................................................................... 5 Chapter Two. Jerusalem 1148-1152 ............................................................................ 33 Chapter Three. Jerusalem, Ascalon and Baniyas 1153-1158 ...................................... 48 Chapter Four. Jerusalem and Constantinople 1159-1165 .......................................... 102 Chapter Five. The David Citadel of Jerusalem 1166 ................................................. 119 Chapter Six. The Ascent of Saladin. Jerusalem, Tyre, Gibelin, Ascalon and the Sinai 1167- 1177 ................................................................................................................. 139 Chapter Seven. Jerusalem 1178-1187 ........................................................................ 169 Chapter Eight. Jerusalem 1187 .................................................................................. 184 Chapter Nine. Epilogue. Alexandria 1188 ................................................................. 210 Historical Notes ......................................................................................................... 213 Copyright ©: René Dewil Words: 129406 July 2008 Star Seeker – Book II. Jerusalem Page: 5 / 216 Chapter One. Antioch 1148 Antioch was a large town. It stretched out even beyond its old walls in a wide valley eroded by the Orontes River. The green of the pastures reminded me of my home village in France. The valley was fertile. Antioch huddled to the east and to the north against and up high Mount Silpios, up Mount Habib-an-Najjar. On this insurmountable chain of peaks throned also the high citadel of the town, and on the lower flanks of the mountain one could see large houses, the former villas of the wealthy merchants and notables of the city. To the west, Antioch was delimited by the Orontes, called al-Assi by the Syrians, the rebel river, and the river formed vast swamps to the northwest, breeding beds for large wasps in the summer. I felt certainly more at home here than in the deserts, the mountain gorges and the arid plateaus I had travelled through weeks ago. Mighty, grey hills lined the valley on all sides however, so that all that grew here and all that had been built by human force seemed puny, fortuitous and short-lived, despite a view that many found splendid. Nature at Antioch matched my mind, but I had no intention of staying here longer than necessary. Still, I needed time to reflect. I passed the winter in idleness. I had no inkling to return to the castle where I had been assigned long ago, the Chastel Rouge, the castle forgotten at the border of the Frankish Principality of Antioch and the Saracen territory of the governor of Aleppo, the dangerous castle where the small garrison of Crusader knights might expect each moment an attack that could bring sudden death. My old friend Gormond had left that castle too, to live in Antioch’s citadel, where he taught the art of combat to young men-at-arms. I had no desire to put myself at the service of the Châtelain of the keep of Antioch. I did not know what I wanted, so I wanted nothing and expected nothing. I might as well not have lived. During my long travels along the coasts of the Frankish regions of Tripoli and Antioch, when I returned from the expedition of the Frankish army to the Hauran region, south of Damascus, I had not found out what my life should be. I was listless. I had enough money to live as I wanted, and that knowledge did not urge me to action either. I did not want to live among the crowds, so I hired a small house outside the mighty walls of the town. It was nothing more than a hovel, but it had a tight roof and a barn where I could shelter Awaj, as well as a pasture for the horse to graze in when the times were not too cold. The foul weather of that winter and spring, with its incessant rains that formed the wealth of the peasants of Antioch but were not particularly appreciated by me, did not help. The humidity of the valley, the rain showers swept by cold winds drowned me in despair, and I wallowed in self-pity and boredom. When it did not rain, the winds blew viciously along the river in such cold, that I hid in my hovel for days on. Antioch’s walls were huge, very old, partly old Roman walls with square towers. The walls slung themselves gracelessly, ominously, as heavy brown and grey masses over the hills. The Byzantines had completed the walls, thicker and higher than in their own town of Constantinople. More than three hundred towers were supposed to defend those walls, but I never counted them. I looked up with awe to the high citadel of Antioch, built on a slope of Mount Habib-an-Najjar, the citadel where the Prince Copyright ©: René Dewil Words: 129406 July 2008 Star Seeker – Book II. Jerusalem Page: 6 / 216 lived in his palace. The town was very well protected. The Orontes ran beneath the walls of Antioch on the west, the mountains hung to east and north. To the south, the fortifications faced a deep valley with steep slopes on which the walls and towers loomed, impossible to escalate. Antioch could only be taken by treason, and that was how the French, the first Crusaders, had captured it. The town was large, but there was nothing elegant about the city. It was the drabbest place I had seen in Outremer so far. Its alleys were tight-packed, extremely dirty and crowded with people. It had held many more people in the past, so vast gardens had been arranged within the walls, yet most of the houses huddled together around the ancient souks. Much of the population of Antioch was Christian, mainly Jacobites and Nestorians who lived here, with a few Jewish families and people of the Latin Church of Rome. Many Muslims had stayed after the capture of the city, mostly merchants, but other Muslims lived outside the gates. So these were my neighbours, though we hardly fraternised. Caravans came and went along the main roads that entered the city. Many of them travelled from the direction of Aleppo, for the Orontes valley was a major throughway from Arabia and Syria towards the coastal cities of Rum, the territories controlled by the Roman Emperor of Constantinople. Along those coasts lay the great and ancient ports that still served the Mediterranean: Adalia and Ephesos, and so many others. The city of Antioch prided in a Catholic cathedral, too small for its population, a citadel complex with a keep, and the palace of the Prince of Antioch. The only thing I knew I really had to do, though I supposed it was utterly futile, was to talk to the Prince of Antioch. The other thing I knew was that ultimately I would have to go to Jerusalem, with or without Gormond. I wanted to find the true God in Jerusalem, and understand why He allowed Evil in His creation. I planned to leave the region in mid-spring and ride southwards in the better weather, before the scorching heats of summer. I was very lonely that winter, but Marie was always at my side. My love Marie had disappeared in Vitry in the Champagne of now far France, killed in the burning of the church of the town the Royal Army had laid a siege to. Yet, I spoke to her, and she walked beside me when I went out of my door to feed the horse Awaj. My other friends, Abbot Suger of the monastery of Saint-Denis and Usama ibn Munqidh of the Shaizar, and the boy Yusuf, were also around me. I lived with ghosts and was keenly aware of it, but I preferred the ghosts to the living. I rode to Antioch and asked at the palace for an audience with the Prince. The guards looked at my Arabian robe, the lack of a crusader cross anywhere on me, and I got no further than the first contingent of sentries. I returned three times to the palace to tell I had important information for Raymond of Poitiers, but I was rebuked each time. Yes, someone would tell the Prince. Where did I live? What was my name? I would be called. After more than a month of waiting, a hobelar shouted one morning at the door of my house without dismounting. I opened, acknowledged that I was Sir Daniel du Pallet and the man told me the Prince deigned to receive me at the palace three days later in the afternoon. The man gave the message and rode off. Copyright ©: René Dewil Words: 129406 July 2008 Star Seeker – Book II. Jerusalem Page: 7 / 216 I walked to Antioch on foot. It took a while before I was let in the palace past the guardhouse and into the courtyard on which opened all the interior halls. Two heavily armed guards, eyeing nervously my Damascene curved sword, brought me to a reception hall where Raymond de Poitiers stood warming himself at a hearth.