Chapter 112: Bethlehem
“But those ministers at the Imperial Court, as well as the Grand Master of the Knights Templar and the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, will surely stop him, right?”
“Of course they will stop him when they see no hope. But what if they do see it?” Lego said: “Our intelligence is absolutely reliable. Nur al-Din’s condition has been fluctuating repeatedly, his three sons each have their own agendas, not to mention his Emirs’ military generals.” Lego sighed deeply.
“You know about the conflicts between Nur al-Din and Egypt’s Ilghazi, and his nephew Saladin, right?”
If it were when Nur al-Din was healthy and strong, he certainly wouldn’t target Ilghazi and Saladin at this time, after all, he had just fought against Arslan of Marash, and his soldiers had not yet recovered from the exhaustion and excitement after the war, but he had no choice but to do so, since his Emirs were watching him too.
If he didn’t punish Ilghazi and Saladin, they would suspect that this lion was old, with loose teeth and fallen claws, and he would be attacked by all sides.”
“Doesn’t he have sons?”
“The worst part is that he has three sons, as well as his brother and his brother’s children. They all covet Nur al-Din’s throne and territory, just waiting for him to show fatigue, so he has to put on an extremely stern posture to face those two Kurds. If possible, he might even use them as examples to intimidate those restless fellows. Do you know about their recent movements?”
Merchants from Damascus sent word back saying that Nur al-Din had once summoned Ilghazi and Saladin back to Damascus or Acre under the pretext of launching a holy war, but those two Kurds, though verbally acknowledging the Sultan’s decree and showing a posture of fear and trepidation, never actually set out.
They moved the capital of the Ayyubid dynasty from the burned Fustat to Cairo. It is said they are gathering craftsmen to rebuild city walls, palaces, and fortresses for Cairo. Now Ilghazi is the Grand Vizier of the Fatimid Dynasty, and his nephew Saladin also holds military power and is immensely prestigious. It seems they will not return to Syria.
“If I were them, I wouldn’t go back either,” Lego said. “After all, they are slaves of Sultan Nur al-Din, his Emirs. It’s fine when they don’t meet, but once they do, if they still dare to defy the Sultan’s words, Nur al-Din has the right to string them up with a longbow and hang them.
But up to now, do you think Nur al-Din is really preparing to launch a holy war, or just looking for an excuse?”
“Hard to say.”
No matter how much grace and protection Baldwin IV received from God and the saints, he was still only fourteen years old, so young and without a solid foundation—Jacques meant that this heir to the kingdom, who had to live in isolation due to leprosy, had few trustworthy friends and subordinates around him.
His two ministers, Count Raymond of Tripoli and Grand Duke Bohemond of Antioch, were also his legitimate elders. If he showed the natural awe and obedience that ordinary children have toward elders, he would be nothing more than a puppet.
Thinking of this, Jacques couldn’t help but show a somewhat worried expression. From the Knight of Bethlehem, their new king might not be a cowardly and useless person. But getting involved in such dangerous political struggles, they also worried about being suddenly swallowed by the whirlpool.
“What we are doing does not harm the interests of those lords, nor are we explicitly inciting the new king to do anything. But if our intelligence can help him regain his power earlier—I dare not say how much benefit we can gain, but at least in the field of commerce, we should be able to obtain great convenience and privileges.”
What Lego didn’t say was that he wanted to take this opportunity to fight for greater voice for the Isaacites in front of the new king. This kind of thing, every generation of Isaacites has been doing, some succeeded, some didn’t, but even if they succeeded, the achievements those people could achieve could only be said to be barely adequate—the Isaacites were still largely excluded from guilds, and prohibited from owning land or becoming officials.
They could still only engage in professions like merchants, moneylenders, or money changers, which were not popular.
He did have a friend who was once a skilled goldsmith, but because he was rejected by the guild, he had to move to Bilbeis—“By the way,” Lego suddenly said: “I once had a friend living in the City of Bilbeis. When the city fell, he escaped from inside. Now he is going to another place, but his daughter is ill. I arranged for him to stay in an inn for a few days, until the girl’s illness is cured, then we’ll talk about what comes next.
If possible, I will arrange for you to meet him. He is… a wise and kind elder. I think you can learn from him things that you can’t learn from me.”
Jacques would of course not refuse. He knew that his father-in-law regarded him as another son, and every suggestion he made was for his own good. Suddenly asking him to meet such a person must also have reasons important enough that he couldn’t know.
Lego nodded in satisfaction.
For this son-in-law, he also felt very satisfied, except that he was not an Isaacite.
However, if he were an Isaacite, he wouldn’t make him his son-in-law and heir either, after all, to stand before those Christians, an Isaacite wouldn’t do.
After Lego left, Jacques sat alone at the table for a while longer. He repeatedly thought about the events of the past few days, as well as plans and arrangements for the future. Since they had decided to actively participate in the war between the Saracens and Christians—they must be extremely careful, leave no traces, and yet let the new king see their achievements.
He kept thinking until the candle at hand had melted into a pool of wax tears, then he stood up and returned to the bedroom. His wife, seeing him, immediately stood up.
“What are you doing?”
Jacques asked strangely, because he saw his wife open a chest and take out a few clothes from inside, placing them on a stool nearby.
“It’s my aunt.” Jacques’s wife frowned. “She suddenly came to visit me today and told me about her hardships and difficulties. I plan to give her a few clothes, perhaps some money too.”
“Your aunt,” Jacques thought for a moment and recalled someone from his memory: “The one living on Ayyarasa Road?”
“Yes, she married a Christian knight. But I heard that this marriage was not recognized by the Church. After all, her husband was a Crusader knight.” Jacques’s wife said with a furrowed brow, not knowing what to say when thinking of her poor aunt.
The Isaacites have always maintained considerable caution regarding intermarriage with other races, after all, in the scriptures they regard as the standard, the saint Abraham once said, “Do not marry the women of Canaan.”
At that time, God required Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Abraham obeyed the command, but at the last moment, God sent an angel to replace Isaac with a pure lamb—when Isaac grew up and it was time to marry and have children, Abraham called his steward to go to Abraham’s homeland, that is, Mesopotamia, to find a pure-blooded Hebrew woman, rather than having Isaac marry a local Canaanite woman.
Therefore, not intermarrying with other races became the creed of the Isaacites.
Of course, all creeds can be broken, especially in Ayyarasa Road and the surrounding nations, where it was originally a place of mixed ethnicities, and the number of Isaacites here was not enough for them to adhere to this law—they either had to leave Ayyarasa Road or marry people of different faiths.
However, in marriages, the situation of Isaacite women marrying out was still more common than Isaacite men marrying Christian or Saracen women. Jacques being able to marry Lego’s daughter, in the Isaacite community, he was also presumed to convert in the future—now it was just for convenience in doing business with Christians; Isaacites could be quite flexible sometimes.
But the situation with Jacques’s wife’s aunt was different. She had always been a stubborn person, and no one thought this marriage could succeed.
Jacques was originally just a craftsman’s son, later just a merchant. If he married an Isaacite woman or a Saracen woman, no one would care too much. But a Crusader knight marrying an Isaacite woman, especially twenty years ago, was hard for people to accept.
At least the priests and the knights of the knightly orders firmly believed that this marriage was invalid; they were just cohabiting, and their child was just an illegitimate son. And the worrying thing indeed happened: not two years later, that knight died on the battlefield, and as his wife, not only could she not inherit his estate, but she and the child were driven out of the castle together.
If that knight didn’t have a brother who was a castle steward, it was unknown how hard their mother and son would have lived.
“Is her son called Witt… Didn’t he already enter the castle to work as a servant before?”
Hearing Jacques ask this, Jacques’s wife showed an embarrassed smile. “Some things happened,” she said vaguely: “Unfortunately, he died.”
Jacques didn’t pay it much mind; a widow who lost her son throwing herself on wealthy relatives wasn’t excessive. He even walked over, picked up the money bag, poured out the coins inside, and counted them. “Is this enough? Should I add more?”
“Enough.” Jacques’s wife said. “She’s just staying here temporarily, at most a few months. I heard she wants to go back to the Apennines next year; she has other relatives there to rely on.”
“Indeed,” Jacques said sincerely: “A lone woman staying in Ayyarasa Road is ultimately too dangerous.”
————
Early the next morning, Jacques’s wife went to see her aunt. To be honest, she didn’t like her much, because the latter was always quite arrogant—though it wasn’t entirely incomprehensible. Although she was an Isaacite, when she was young, she had beauty surpassing morning dew and roses, and it was because of this that the knight fell in love with her regardless.
She had also said that rather than being married off by her father to an Isaacite, giving birth to Isaacite children, and continuing to suffer contempt and torment, she would rather stay at home forever, and if she could marry a Christian knight, that would be even better. When she insisted on marrying him despite her mother’s weeping and her father’s curse—not only did the Church not recognize their marriage, but among the Isaacites, she was as good as dead.
In Jacques’s wife’s faint memory, this aunt had come back once, standing far away outside the Isaacite community. Her grandfather shut the doors and windows immediately upon seeing her. Even if her father hesitated wanting to go out for a look, he was ruthlessly refused. But to say they really cut ties completely, maybe not—at least after that knight died, the grandfather had wanted to take her back.
But her aunt refused. Jacques’s wife didn’t know what she was thinking, but she hid some things from her husband—she knew that her aunt’s son Witt had once been a prince’s servant and unexpectedly received God’s blessing—this was what her father Lego had inquired about. Later Witt became a monk, and then somehow, for some reason, he died.
Lego had let it slip once after drinking, then forced those who heard at the time, his wife and daughter, to never speak of this matter. It seemed that it was connected to some big figure…
“Madam?” she asked softly.
In the narrow inn room, Witt’s mother was still dressed in coarse linen black clothes, wearing a hood and veil. When she turned her head, her eyes were like two glowing spots of some animal in the darkness.
Jacques’s wife was startled. She pressed her chest and walked into the room. She hadn’t brought a servant—after all, this was someone who was already “dead.” If seen by the Isaacites’ sages, she would be punished for it.
She brought things for her aunt: clothes, food, and money. Because she got her husband’s permission, she added a little more, enough for her aunt to board a ship back to the Apennines, even find a monastery or cottage to stay temporarily. But her aunt just flipped through them and boredly put them down.
“I also brought you an amulet.” Jacques’s wife said.
This pure silver amulet—when her aunt left the Isaacite community, she took nothing, only thin clothes on her body. Their sages wouldn’t allow her to continue defiling the Isaacites’ relics. Jacques’s wife had worried she would fly into a rage or disdain it, but she took it, examined it carefully, and then precious-ly hung it around her own neck.
Jacques’s wife relaxed in her heart. “I have to go,” she said: “The ship is arranged. When you board the ship and arrive in the Apennines, write to me.”
But her aunt just pulled down the veil and smiled strangely: “Then, come kiss me, my dear little niece.”
