Chapter 176: Request For Aid
That’s right, Queen Mother Maria said to herself, if you are destined to be a tender-hearted king, then in these few years while you can still retain your humanity, why not pour this honor and affection onto my child?
This is also your sister, and her age is the most suitable for Baldwin. By the time she grows up and can bear and raise children, Baldwin’s life will nearly have reached its end.
It is as if this is a cycle. At Baldwin’s baptismal ceremony, his uncle Baldwin III also felt his days were numbered, so he placed his hand on the swaddling clothes and said that Ayyarasa Road would belong to this child in the future. Similarly, he could place his hand on the swaddling clothes of Isabella’s child at the last moment of his life and say the same.
She had previously been worried that Sibylla ultimately giving birth to a stillborn would shake Baldwin’s soft heart again, or that their mother, the Countess of Jaffa, would come to persuade him to bring Sibylla back to Ayyarasa Road.
Fortunately, Sibylla’s previous actions had already disappointed the king time and again, and when she truly encountered calamity, Baldwin resolutely left her in Nalessa to recuperate, still far from him and Holy Cross Castle. This was truly a gratifying matter, at least Queen Mother Maria and her handmaids thought so.
If Sibylla and Abigail had not revealed such an ugly and ferocious face after their conspiracy succeeded, Queen Mother Maria might not have acted so quickly.
No matter what, she was an outsider in Ayyarasa Road. Even though she had borne a child for Amalric I, fusing the Komnenos and Flanders（ King of Ayyarasa Road’s surname） together, she was still a Byzantine. People either ignored her or guarded against her.
She did have her own people, as well as brains and experience, but these were like a sharp yet brittle knife, usable only at the most critical moments.
When Queen Mother Maria was still a girl, she was extremely patient, so she could hardly understand why Sibylla was so hasty.
Not to mention whether Sibylla could bear a boy, even if she did, it would ultimately be King Baldwin of Ayyarasa Road who decided the true heir.
And after these years of observation, she could confirm that although Baldwin appeared sufficiently humble and gentle, beneath this soft facade stood that proud, aloof, and unapproachable son of heaven.
He had been somewhat flustered in handling matters with Sibylla and Abigail, but there was nothing strange about that. After all, Amalric I had been dead for less than three years. For him to suddenly transform from a child still looking up to and relying on his father into a decisive, ruthless monarch was too much to ask, but with the growth of age and the passage of time, he would eventually realize this.
By then, he would be like a flying insect emerging from a heavy cocoon, shedding all worldly love, family ties, friendship, even desires, carrying only the dust of power and glory as it dances in the high air. Others would be mere insignificant dust and withered leaves to him.
And what she had to do was to continue maintaining the posture of a loving mother in these final years, creating a warm nest for this king, so that when he wanted to rest, he would think of this place.
If she could thereby offset the influence of blood ties, making him truly see her and little Isabella as family… even if he could not wait for Isabella’s child to be born, as long as he chose a husband to his liking for Isabella, the people of Ayyarasa Road would obey his will.
Time passes swiftly, but she could wait.
It was only on the day Baldwin hurried to Bethlehem and hurried back that Sibylla and Abigail’s attitudes gave her a bad premonition. Obviously, she was prepared to bide her time, but that foolish princess did not think so. She was like a beast that did not know how to think and was starving, wanting only to reach out and grab everything when she saw what she desired.
And the first step Sibylla took had to be said to have some brains. She stepped on her own brother, the King of Ayyarasa Road, to prove how legitimate and noble the child in her womb was.
And if she succeeded, the mistress of Holy Cross Castle would have to change, even if this future king was still just a mass of flesh in a woman’s womb. Conversely, if Sibylla truly became the mistress of Holy Cross Castle, she might even turn around and use this to threaten her brother and her subjects.
Yes, among Christians, women are required to be chaste, silent, and meek.
But in fact, even if just a lord, he would need a woman who could guard his territory and income for him in his absence, not a nun or a prostitute.
And the king’s wife, or any female kin of the king, had the same obligations and power. Now Baldwin did not feel too constrained because Queen Mother Maria had made concessions for her daughter little Isabella.
Even though at every public meeting and court session, she sat at the king’s side, she rarely voiced her own opinions, let alone opposed the king.
As for Sibylla—Queen Mother Maria had no doubt that she would bluster at every possible opportunity, even dragging her own brother down if it came to that. Baldwin would have to fight his own sister first no matter what he wanted to do, wasting his energy and prestige in vain.
Unless he could marry and let his wife take over the power in Holy Cross Castle, or his mother the Countess of Jaffa replace Sibylla—but not to mention that the Countess of Jaffa’s marriage to Amalric I had been declared invalid, staying here would be somewhat without legitimate standing.
Just saying Sibylla was also her daughter, she probably did not have Irene’s ruthlessness to strike at her own flesh and blood.
Women like Sibylla, Maria had seen countless in Constantinople while she was there. In the Byzantine court, the emperor’s mother, sisters, daughters, even wives all had moments of grasping power, such as Irene whom she had mentioned earlier; she was the emperor’s wife.
After the emperor’s death, Irene seized great power in the court through her son. But she had no talent for ruling, so she was quickly overthrown. Yet after being overthrown, she did not fall into despair; on the contrary, she was quite resilient in this regard. She took advantage of an enemy invasion to kill her watchers, then returned to the court with supporters’ help and seized great power again.
On the first day she regained power, she stripped her son of power and eyesight, leading to his death a few days later from pain and infection. Not only that, she did not spare her own grandson—she castrated him directly, and the young child nearly followed his father soon after.
Her atrocities provoked others’ anger; they stormed the Royal Palace, dragged her out, and she was imprisoned again. This time, she had no chance of restoration and ultimately died silently on the island of her imprisonment.
This person’s life almost vividly illustrated that for a person, being stupid is fine, being evil is fine, but being both stupid and evil could cause how much harm.
And her stepdaughter seemed to let Queen Mother Maria see such a future.
The only fortunate thing was that Ayyarasa Road here did not advocate the Byzantine system of inheritance and rule.
A young king’s mother might become Regent, but as long as she could not lead the army to fight the Saracens, the authority she could grasp would be minimal—just like Constance of Antioch. She could refuse her son’s demand to assume power because Reynald of Châtillon could truly fight… After Reynald became a Saracen prisoner, the knights of Antioch could ignore her orders, threats, and pleas to bring back Bohemond III.
But this weakness existed only on men’s battlefields. For Maria of Holy Cross Castle and her daughter little Isabella, Sibylla as “mistress” was still like a poisonous thorn flickering faintly in the darkness, liable to pierce their hearts and take their lives at any time.
And in this place, no one would plead for them or clear their names.
Isabella was just a girl, and she was an outsider.
She had to strike first, even if to most people hasty action would only bring her danger with little gain. Not to mention that now Byzantium and Sibylla’s husband Abigail’s family were in their honeymoon period—they were fighting together.
But for Queen Mother Maria, there was no better opportunity than this. That cunning-as-a-fox Grand Duke Bohemond III of Antioch was far away thousands of miles, and Sibylla had been exiled to Nalessa for angering the king. Her husband Abigail was by her side, but this fellow was as dull as a wild boar, posing no threat. She easily lured him away with just a few beautiful prostitutes.
And Sibylla, who had entered the late stages of pregnancy, was greatly affected in excretion, action, and diet, especially when she discovered she was becoming ugly—Queen Mother Maria, who was already a mother, naturally knew that in the late stages of pregnancy, no matter how a woman maintained herself, dressed up, or how stunning her previous beauty, she would become haggard, sallow, and bloated; it was inevitable.
If Sibylla had not done something foolish, and the Countess of Jaffa had been by her side, she might not have fallen to the point of being manipulated.
The Countess of Jaffa had indeed tried to go accompany her, but she refused even to see her, thinking her mother had come to mock her. And her most loyal servant—Abigail’s staying out all night and absent-mindedness—did indeed arouse her doubt.
She flew into a rage at every turn, sometimes wept, and casually beat and cursed her handmaids and servants, causing everyone to live in fear.
Queen Mother Maria did nothing; she merely had merchants recommend to these handmaids things that could help them avoid Sibylla’s beatings and scoldings: light wine to soothe a pregnant woman’s irritable mood, cosmetics to make her radiant again, brightly colored cloth, richly scented perfume. And all this began only after Sibylla’s pregnancy had passed six months.
She had prepared long ago. Not only did she want to prevent Sibylla from bearing this child, but also to ruin her body, leaving space for her little Isabella to grow. At least until she had the ability and awareness to protect herself, she did not want Sibylla back in Ayyarasa Road.
And there was one thing that made her feel wonderfully strange: regarding Sibylla’s stillborn, the one who suspected her was not the Christians in the City of Ayyarasa Road, but her great-uncle, or rather… father.
This was a secret sealed in a dark corner. She had gone mad over it before and feared it to the point of wanting suicide. She was a child of incest—although during monarch changes, the victor seizing the loser’s wife and daughters was not uncommon.
Manuel I had succeeded to the throne by killing his brother Isaac—his previous two brothers had died in the same year, when he was twenty-four. No one could question his involvement, but after becoming Emperor of Byzantium, he indeed castrated the sons and grandsons of his three brothers and made his own niece an unacknowledged consort, even though her mother was already married with a husband.
This tradition was also inherited by Manuel I’s son; at least he was eager to try.
When King Amalric I of Ayyarasa Road intended to form an alliance with Byzantium through marriage, countless young women in the court sought this match. Maria did not know how many were struggling to escape a fate like her mother’s, but she too had pulled many unspeakable strings.
If she had a hundred enemies in the court before seeking this marriage, she might have had a thousand when she left the court.
Her enemies had no intention of letting her go. If not for her stepson Baldwin and Caesar, she might have been torn apart and devoured by enraged she-bears the moment she entered Ayyarasa Road.
See, they used such a fine tool for execution. Everyone knew bears differed from other beasts; they basically ate their prey alive. They not only wanted her dead but dead in humiliation and pain. But did she regret it?
She did not regret it at all. If she ended up like her own mother, she would rather be eaten alive by a bear. Of course, in the end she won the bet, though it could not be called a complete victory.
The people of Ayyarasa Road did not suspect because there were too many changes here; generally, few considered things a dozen years later. But she was different, and little Isabella was different. If they did not consider it now, a dozen years later they would be lambs to the slaughter.
But from the Byzantine standpoint, Maria’s great-uncle or birth father saw the reason at a glance—Sibylla was not someone most people liked, but no matter how much they despised Sibylla, they would want her to safely bear a boy. They had no reason to do this.
But did this benefit Queen Mother Maria in any way?
No, she was not Baldwin and Sibylla’s birth mother, and she had a daughter of her own. For little Isabella, she would resort to any means.
