God's Wolf by Jeffrey Lee

Author:Jeffrey Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

Reynald’s destination was the holiest place of all – the very wellspring of the crusading spirit. Pilgrims flocked from all over Christendom to pray nearby at Christ’s birthplace in Bethlehem, and to bathe in the Jordan where he was baptized. In the city itself they could follow the stations of his passion to pray at the very holy of holies, the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

When Reynald arrived in 1176, Jerusalem had been a Christian city for three-quarters of a century. After its capture from the Muslims in 1099, the Jewish and Islamic populations had been massacred and any survivors expelled. As Fulcher of Chartres had written, poor crusaders found themselves living in great mansions. Still, apart from its role as a tourist trap, Jerusalem was not a wealthy town. Isolated in the hills, it lay on no trade route, nor was it strategically sited. The ports generated much more revenue, and many sites would have been more convenient as capital, but Jerusalem was supreme through its holy associations. The main business of Jerusalem was power – it was a military base and the spiritual and temporal capital of the kingdom.

The Patriarch of Jerusalem ruled over the Palestinian Church, and the Military Orders were also headquartered there. The Knights Templar were based on the gigantic platform of the ancient Temple Mount, in Solomon’s temple – actually the mosque of Al-Aqsa. The Knights Hospitallers’ headquarters were in their great Hospital of St John.

Reynald would have found Jerusalem weakly fortified, though. No invader had threatened the city for decades, and the walls were in a decrepit state. Only the powerful citadel, the Tower of David, was in good repair. It was an appropriate place for Reynald to celebrate his freedom, though; with a lot of pilgrim tourists and soldiers around, the capital had a reputation as a decadent, licentious party town. We don’t know how fully he took advantage of the entertainment on offer, but we do know that at court he walked into a snakepit of intrigue.

Rumour and conspiracy swirled around the boy-king Baldwin IV. The immediate incentive was who would govern when King Baldwin’s leprosy made him too sick to rule. A little further ahead, ambitious nobles like Raymond of Tripoli saw an even greater prize on offer – the succession itself. Baldwin would not live long. He could not father children, and there was no clear heir apparent. Two main cliques had coalesced in the contest for power; and Raymond of Tripoli headed one of these factions. Through Baldwin IV’s minority, Raymond had been too passive as regent. He had appointed the brilliant Archbishop William of Tyre as chancellor and had managed to hold the realm together, but he had signally failed to inhibit the inexorable rise of Saladin. Raymond had recently surrendered the regency when Baldwin came of age, but he was left with a taste for high office and harboured ambitions for the very summit. His support came from numerous barons, especially

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