Chapter 223: Fourth Wife Candidate
What happened at the banquet quickly spread like a bird with wings to all parts of Cyprus and even more remote places.
Some praised it, some opposed it, some approved, some scorned it, and most thought it was just a show put on by those with vested interests.
Shortly after Walter left, two letters arrived from the Kingdom of Ayyarasa Road, one of which was of course from Baldwin.
Baldwin’s response was far more optimistic than that of others. He had spent nearly half of his current life with Caesar—from nine to sixteen years old, the most important and critical period for forming one’s values. To say whether he was influenced by Caesar—naturally he was.
Especially since Caesar’s body housed an adult who had received systematic education, was mentally mature, and had commendable character, while Baldwin was just a child. Living together day and night, influenced subtly, it was not surprising that they gradually came to share similar views and actions on certain matters.
Moreover, Baldwin was not originally a person of malicious temperament. It must be known that when he first met Caesar, he was still a nine-year-old child who had suddenly suffered great changes—he had originally been the sole heir to the Kingdom of Ayyarasa Road, with everyone saying he would become the Guardian of the Holy City.
But in the blink of an eye, everything was taken from him. His father, his mother, his sister, his attendant—those friends who had sworn to share fortune and hardship with him—they all vanished, leaving him alone and isolated in the tower.
If it had been another child, they might have long since filled with hatred and resentment toward the entire world and humanity because of such experiences.
But Baldwin did not. Upon first seeing another healthy, handsome, and strong peer, he did not think—oh, I should keep him by my side and make him end up like me. Instead, he thought that he should have a better place to go.
He believed that teaching such a good person to spend every subsequent day in torment accompanying a leper, or letting the disease take away his appearance and life, was an immoral thing.
When Caesar was still in another world, as a rotating doctor, he had seen countless patients who became hideous due to illness and fear of death—they had all been good people with kind temperaments before, but illness always transformed them beyond recognition.
He had already made the worst plans at that time, yet the nine-year-old Baldwin gave him a completely different answer.
Caesar’s final willingness to stay by his side and devote himself to his condition was also because Baldwin deserved it.
Therefore, in this world, the one who could understand Caesar was probably only Baldwin.
The young king wrote in the letter that, in fact, when introducing new blood to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, compared to whether the “favor” received was substantial, whether they fought bravely, or whether their surnames were ancient—matters that other lords paid extreme attention to—he valued the virtue of the newcomers more, deliberately excluding those young people who indulged in lust, plunder, and killing.
Although he did not state it explicitly, they should have noticed—Baldwin wrote thus: “They became much more restrained afterward, as to why they did not protest to me—strongly protest, just as they did at the banquet in Cyprus and afterward.
I think that is because I am the king, with the most legitimate inheritance rights, the Guardian of the Holy Land, King of Ayyarasa Road, Grand Master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. My power comes from my father, uncle, and grandfather, and my family has held this territory for a century.
While the accusations you are now facing are more because you are the new master of Cyprus, with unsteady footing and unstable foundation. They are not simply voicing discontent and acting rebelliously because they think you overly favor Cypriots—this is also a kind of contest, just like what I experienced not long ago—they will test you with various things: emotions, will, ability.
This is another form of war.
If you win, you are their master. If you lose, then that master is just false fame.”
Afterward, he firmly expressed his support for Caesar.
“In fact, they should be able to think of why we do not allow these people into our army and court, even if they have not yet shown those detestable qualities.
But just think about it, and you will understand that their strong opposition to the three laws you have enacted means they are prepared to violate them.
Just like putting a piece of good meat in an iron box and placing it before a wolf and a lamb—only the wolf will desperately persuade us to open the box, while the lamb is not interested at all. Those willing to obey your laws will not care if someone is really punished for violating them; they may even welcome it. Only those who have violated or are about to violate them will fly into a rage, hoping to intimidate you into retracting the orders.
And if there are such subordinates, especially for you, it is extremely disadvantageous.
You are not like me, nor like Count Raymond of Tripoli or Grand Duke Bohemond of Antioch. We all inherited territory and army from our fathers. Even if there are a few wicked evildoers, people will think it is occasional or exceptional, like a few grains of sand mixed in a handful of wheat, not attracting others’ notice.
But your knights may number only between fifty and one hundred. If one-tenth are those unwilling to be constrained, when people mention you, they will say you are the guy who connives at his subordinates acting arbitrarily and tyrannically.
Now they may only say you are too strict and harsh, but if you really follow their wishes and let the Crusader knights run amok, your reputation will only get worse—I also heard that sinner once spout off at the banquet, saying that what you did would not earn the gratitude of the Cypriots.
I do not think so, or rather the opposite. I have never seen bandits and criminals capable of maintaining loyalty to someone—like the former Armenian Prince Mulai.
As for those Cypriots, even if they do not feel grateful to you for this, at least they will not be filled with hostility toward you.
When the Crusaders attacked Ayyarasa Road back then, they wantonly plundered, raped, and massacred. Now it may seem that some might say such horrific acts did not cause any adverse consequences… Of course not. My father once told me that the current calm in the Holy City is because the current residents gradually migrated in afterward—the previous residents have all gone to hell along with their hatred.
Cyprus is not inferior to Ayyarasa Road. The number of current residents on this island is in no way less than that of Ayyarasa Road, and the previous owner was not our enemy but our current ally, the Byzantine Empire. You cannot completely empty this huge island, nor would you do so—and without the laws you promulgated and their enforcement, we can all imagine that in the next ten, twenty, or even one hundred years, the Cypriots would continuously incite riots or brew conspiracies.
As for whether this will lead to a shortage of manpower, well, the monarch you need to serve is only me. You need not worry about this. Even if you join the next expedition, I only need to bring you alone.
You need not concern yourself with the others.
But I believe there will certainly be some people of equally high virtue like you and me who will come to your side, just like King Arthur or King David.
Additionally…”
Caesar could tell these few sentences were hastily added after finishing writing; the ink color was noticeably different.
“I have received the relief sculpture and the golden ship you sent. I am indeed short of money now, so I planned to dismantle them and sell them, but I got scolded by my teacher. God be my witness, I only wanted to remove the golden frame and unload the gemstones on it. Or perhaps we should offer it to the Pope of Rome, but that seems a bit too strange, since it is a gift from the Byzantines to you.
But if you refuse the marriage they proposed, perhaps it can slightly appease that Holy Father’s anger.
Yes, by the time this letter reaches you, Alexander III’s niece—I say they have too many nieces—has already arrived in Cyprus.
I think you probably will not agree to this marriage, and I do not agree either.
We are all clear about the malice harbored by Alexander III of the Roman Church and the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire. They intend to take Cyprus back from you without spending a single coin.
Oh, right, our teacher Patriarch Heraclius has also written you a letter.
In this letter, I think he may scold you severely. His thinking ultimately differs somewhat from ours. If my father Amalric I were in your position now, he would not care at all what the Crusader knights did to the people of Cyprus, and would even use the knights of the Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller to brutally suppress them, just as he did in Egypt.
I cannot condemn his actions, since that is also a choice many lords and kings would make. But likewise, I hope you can forge a completely new path different from the usual.
Still very much longing to meet you—Baldwin.”
Caesar finished reading this letter and picked up the second one.
The second letter was of course from Heraclius to him. He opened it to read. Sure enough, as Baldwin said, in the letter, his teacher severely rebuked his actions at the banquet.
Just as those who thought he was too harsh said, Heraclius also believed that, whether canon law, Roman law, or customary law, only Christians could enjoy the benefits and power within them.
Apart from these believers who should receive their protection, it was extremely necessary to distinguish heathens and heretics from Christians, especially those knights who would serve him.
But he abruptly changed tone and said—unless the other party committed truly intolerable crimes—for example, the former Antioch cannibalism incident.
The horrific crime he mentioned occurred during the First Holy War. At that time, although the Seljuk Turks’ Sultan Arslan was defeated by the charge of the Crusader knights, he did not become disheartened or dejected. On the contrary, during his retreat, he ordered the residents in his territory to take all food and livestock with them—in short, scorched earth tactics.
So much so that after the Crusaders paid a huge price to capture Antioch, they found themselves out of ammunition and food.
Although it is still unknown today whether the granaries in Antioch were burned by the Turks before leaving or accidentally set by the Crusaders while attacking the city, in any case, over ten thousand led by three lords poured into Antioch, and upon finding no food, surged together toward a small city said to have ample fodder. This city was called Marat al-Numan, but even if it truly had grain, it could not feed so many people.
The result was that the starving and freezing Crusader army, unable to find food, actually resorted to the corpses of the dead in the city.
At this point, even the most pious, indifferent, and vehemently hating heathens monks could not tolerate it. Some monks even recorded without disguise in the records—the Crusader knights even cut adult corpses into large pieces and boiled them in pots, then skewered children’s limbs on spears and roasted them over bonfires.
This shocking event quickly spread. When the lords led their armies back, the first order was to execute every single Crusader in the city without exception.
Subsequently, he even personally set fire to burn down the entire city to cover up this horrific crime.
Heraclius cited this as an example, in fact hinting that Caesar could exaggerate the charges, even saying that these two Gerard family members were tempted by devils in the world to perform evil sacrifices—it did not matter. Previously, no one had doubted the first Grand Duke of Antioch or suspected him of favoring heathens.
As long as there is a suitable reason, those who originally loved Caesar would find ways to convince themselves and forgive him.
But Caesar thought that this time he might disappoint his teacher, just like how after the Marat al-Numan city incident, the Crusaders who captured Ayyarasa Road still showed no mercy or compassion toward the residents of the City of Ayyarasa Road.
Whenever someone is punished not for violating the law but for actions too contrary to human nature, there will always be those who test the law with their bodies. After all, judging the severity of crimes based on personal views and emotions is inherently unfair, with gaps large enough for a camel to pass through.
Imagine if the Grand Duke of Antioch back then, when executing those Crusader knights, had done so not because they ate people, but by promulgating laws prohibiting plunder, rape, and killing outside of combat—then Ayyarasa Road would not have suffered such a despairing fate back then.
Caesar had prepared early on. Apart from not wanting to abandon the bottom line and beliefs he brought from another world, there was an even more important reason—he knew his own concepts were hard to change, and human nature makes it easy to go from frugality to extravagance, but difficult from extravagance to frugality.
Although this saying does not seem entirely appropriate here, the meaning is the same. But when he established his own laws early on and told people that these laws would fairly face everyone, although many would leave, those still willing to gather by his side in such circumstances would inevitably be people of noble character and firm will—good people.
And if he relaxed the requirements, for a time his knights and subjects might seem to increase, but when they truly ran amok, could he really tolerate it?
He did not believe a criminal could control himself. Today it is heathens, tomorrow heretics, the day after sinners who violated the law, and the day after that, it might be slaves, commoners, merchants, or even anyone of lower status than him, or his colleagues, his lords… A beast that has tasted blood can never become a harmless lamb.
This would mean he had to repeatedly cover for them, clean up the mess, and could not treat them severely. Once he did so, these people would even feel aggrieved—didn’t you tolerate it before? Why suddenly impose such high demands on us now?
By then, they would still leave him, or even betray and sell him out.
And in this process, he would likewise lose the strength he could originally gather—like the current Cypriots.
He still needed to carefully consider how to reply to his teacher Heraclius. Unfortunately, before he could take out new parchment and ink, an attendant came to report that the niece of Pope Alexander III had arrived at the port, with priests and nobles already gone to greet her.
But judging by their posture, they seemed determined to wait for Caesar to personally greet her before this lady would be willing to disembark.
