Continuitas

Baldwin is ill, but this is nothing new. Each time they have met has seemed certain to be their last. Saladin is sick at heart himself, and it’s difficult to think of what can be said once the pleasantries have been exchanged and hospitalities extended between men of faith. He’s seated nearer to the king of Jerusalem than custom might allow if they had witnesses, but they are alone, and he watches him in the light. Baldwin is tense, even at rest, and it is painful to see; he lies propped up on cushions and surrounded by his maps. On the table at his feet there is a chessboard, swept of its pieces, and a mirror. A cup of shaved ice sits melting, unattended; it exhales the scent of roses as it passes away. Somewhere in another adjoining room, a breeze is rising, not enough to disturb the oil lamps’ slim, pale flames.

They talk of fortifications, of raids, of weddings, of promises, of peaces – the king of Jerusalem seems to be half-dreaming, but he needs no prompting from Saladin to continue. Saladin has had decades of experience with men who were either intractable or yielding only as near-interchangeable masks for their own helpless ignorance. Any man who mistook the king’s mildness for docility would be gravely disappointed.

Baldwin breaks off to stare at his own ruined hand, a knot of bandages that lies motionless against the sheets.

“Most kings are at least permitted to think they’ll rule forever – or that they’ll live on in their sons. Sound policy, in some cases, but such men are often foolhardy even as they go about securing their own futures. I’ll have no sons. I’ll have no wife. All my hope lies in Jerusalem. I confess, I wonder if it would still be so, had I a choice in the matter.”

He might have said something about his father before him – a man who had already laid the groundwork in his own time for a finer peace, whether he knew it or not. He might have said something with the character of a consolation, about dwelling on impossibilities, or an assurance that Baldwin in his enforced solitude was more humane than most whole men of any faith. But there’s a time for consolation in philosophy and it isn’t now.

Saladin averts his eyes for his moment, shifts his gaze to an indifferent place on the wall where a map has been taken down.

“Your sister Sibylla – she has a son, does she not?”

“He’s only a child. And if he happens to share my looks one day as well as my name, he’ll never be anything else. God have mercy on all boy kings.” His fever-bright eyes are lowered and dimmed; he fumbles with his better hand for a silver cup.

Beneath the mask, his mouth is a ruin. Saladin watches him drink with some benevolent interest.

If King Baldwin had fathered sons, Saladi would have liked to have seen them. Even children who’d shared his deformity might have shared his patience, his foresight, his justness – but then again, they might not have inherited either, and Jerusalem would have been blighted by a fresh crop of pugnacious young Franks with the Pope’s blessing on them like a hot coal. Perhaps it’s better this way for both of them. Baldwin’s successors will be his by free choice, and he will have no sons. He’ll die having scarcely lived, and he’ll still have striven for more than a healthy man would dare in a dozen lifetimes.

He looks at the King of Jerusalem and wonders what sort of men his own sons will become. They’ll never know a Christian king like this one, nor remember a peace like the brief one he strove for, but he can hope. Surely no king ever shone in such splendor on a sickbed, leper or no. His mask is stamped with a thousand delicate geometric figures, their edges shining in the light, and his young shoulders are straight. The pleasing arrangement of his immaculate attire leaves the body beneath to mere suggestion, a graceful fiction of concealment. But his exhaustion is evident in his voice, and his surgeons have come and gone. The edge of one white sleeve is dotted in blood.

He leans in and presses Baldwin’s ruined hand to his mouth, mindful that it is unclean and that he is an old man and that Baldwin is a Christian. The boy’s garments smell sickly-sweet like mint in vinegar. The odor of flesh cuts through it, only faintly, and under his sleeves his wrist is fever-warm, his pulse runs sluggish.

There’s a halting pause. Baldwin turns over his hand to cup his chin, showing a great deal of delicacy for one from whom nature has robbed most of his dexterity. The boy’s arm shakes in his grasp from the effort of lifting it.

Saladin smiles. The bandages prickle at his beard.

Baldwin lifts his chin, struggling for a moment of imperiousness. It only emphasizes the crisp band of his collar and the thin slash of knotted flesh visible at the edge of it, shining. “You do me a great honor.” Any trace of dreaminess has evaporated; only an aching fatigue remains, that of a young man who’s done too much and would do more if only he were permitted. If Baldwin had been a woman, Saladin would have married her.

“Kings deserve courtesy,” he says, still with the trace of a smile on his lips. Which of them buckles first, it would be difficult to say – the young king has some pity for his age, or Saladin shows mercy for his bodily weakness. Whatever it is can’t be said, but it passes in a look.

Baldwin embraces him in a tangle of sleeves. His thin arms are more powerful than one might expect of a leper, if one hadn’t known him at Montgisard. He draws him easily onto his bed.

“I wouldn’t have you do anything you might regret,” he says, half-breathless and thick-voiced. He has a beautiful voice, well-suited to command but more pleasant still as he is now. His voice alone stirs a species of desire in men who hear it – a man with that voice could have been a new Alexander, if he were not in love with peace. Peace may elude them both, in the end.

“Nor would I. After all, this is not one of your Christian practices,” Saladin says, wry.

“On the contrary, it seems to be commonly ascribed to all nations.” Breathing isn’t easy for him now, coming in rattling bursts, but he seems to be in a better humor. “I’ll allow it if you do. If this is the worst I’ve done to my fellow man, I’ll die contented.”

The Franks accuse the Saracens of it, the Saracens blame the Franks. If in this age either of their peoples can be said to possess a characteristic vice, it isn’t this; this is unfamiliar ground, unmapped territory. It isn’t a sin. It’s a consolation, an overflowing of what can’t be shown otherwise except on the field of battle.

Saladin kisses his throat, his shoulder, his breast, every bandaged place. When he lifts his head those keen blue eyes are fixed on him with intent.

His shirt slides up obligingly and the bedclothes fall away from his bandaged legs; Saladin gazes on him without flinching. His thighs are almost unmarked, and they are white, threaded with gold near their apex. (King Baldwin had been tremendously fair-haired as a younger man and yet in the intermittent years somehow Saladin had thought that he’d darkened, had imagined him tarnished to match his princely sister. But amidst the raw flesh there is preciousness left.) Whether the member between them is unblemished can’t be said. Baldwin guides his hand and presses it between his legs; Saladin feels him stiffening under his fingers.

Baldwin presses his face to his shoulder, a sharp metal jostle felt through clothing and a sigh. Saladin releases him as softly as he can, he rises to put out the lights and returns to him with a gladder heart. Kings are still kings in the dark. It can’t be helped.